


A Demon Hunter's Inner Demons

by zeddmondson



Category: Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Gay Male Character, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, PTSD, Religious Indoctrination, Science Fantasy, lavender marriage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-04-22 15:44:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14311968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeddmondson/pseuds/zeddmondson
Summary: When Alucard was just a child, his parents were killed and he was captured by demons. He suffered cruelties and tortures at their hands for months until he was rescued by a clan of demon hunters who raised him as their own. He had since become an outstanding demon hunter himself, and he roamed the Land of Dawn to mercilessly hunt down every single demon in existence. He met Miya, a moon temple elf maiden notable for being one of the best marksmen in the Land of Dawn, and the two developed a romantic relationship. Their marriage was believed to be the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy foretold by an emissary of Tŏn, the Moon God, in which the holy matrimony of a human and a moon elf would herald the ultimate end of demonkind about a century after the seal cast upon them long ago would inevitably weaken again.But that was only part of the story of him that everyone knew.





	1. Why Do Humans Cry?

**Author's Note:**

> Genres – Science Fantasy, Gay Fiction  
> Trigger Warnings – Internalized homophobia, mentions of torture and abuse, religious indoctrination, emotional manipulation, PTSD
> 
> Disclaimer  
> I am not part of Moonton, nor do I own Mobile Legends. If I do own Mobile Legends, Zilong would be Alucard’s Valentine’s skin partner instead of Miya. Zilong would have his helmet off in the Blazing Lancer skin model, and Gusion would still be Gossen. Kagura would still be male just like Chihiro Fujisaki from Danganronpa. The ‘family-friendly’ skin nerfs would never happen, or if the censorship is needed, I would explain the reason for the changes. But most importantly, I would ensure that more time and budget goes to game/hero balancing than releasing too many new OP heroes at a time and ensuring that non-discriminatory, pro-equality company policies are strictly implemented.
> 
> Foreword  
> This fanfic actually started off as a joke, and was basically a non-musical diss track of sorts directed to the cringetastic 2018 Valentine skins and Gossen not having his own loading screen. And then this happened. It was originally planned to be a one-shot with only Miya and Alucard’s conversation about their marriage, but I ended up doing a full-length fanfic out of this. For some reason, cringe inspires me. The nearly-complete per-chapter outline of this story was already written in advance during the release of Gossen/Gusion and the 2018 Valentine skins, and I’m just fleshing things out. So, the lore herein might contradict the canon lore within a few patches and hero releases. I have considered the lore only up to Selena, Karina's sister.
> 
> Before you start reading this fanfic, I must warn you now, if you did not read or missed the trigger warning. This is a heavier read than an average fanfic about some mobile MOBA game from China, and is indeed a product of overthinking. If you want an overall upbeat read, there are many lighthearted, flufftastic fanfics out there, and this is not one of them. I am an architect by profession and not a doctor or a scientist, so I am certain that there are medical inaccuracies in this story, although I have done my best to do my research.
> 
> By the way, this story is fabricated indeed and not a real historical story.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A waifish child is rescued by the Demon Hunters from the Underworld. But that doesn't mean that his suffering is over. Rather, his struggles were only beginning.

‘It’s okay, young one. You’re safe now,’ a dark-haired man wearing a long, black coat said softly in an attempt to comfort Jack, a waifish, heavily-tortured six-year-old boy whose chains he had just shattered. The man had bent down to meet Jack eye to eye. He had wrapped a towel around the boy’s scrawny waist to cover his nakedness, and when the boy realized this, he held on tight to the woolen towel, taking an immediate liking to it as a comfort object after having been denied the right to wear clothing for a long time. And just as immediately, the towel changed color from a soft beige to a rusty brown from the amount of blood that it had absorbed. Another man, one with silver hair and wearing an equally-long, green coat, had with him a first aid kit. He was tending to the boy’s many injuries.

The dark-haired man had on his back a large, blood-soaked sword, five feet long and a foot wide. The strong, sharp smell of the blade was still fresh within the dismal dungeon cell they were in, mingling with the stench of stale blood and rusty platters of rotten entrails and offal served to the captives as food.

‘Who are you people? Why are you helping me?’ Jack asked. ‘Ouch, that hurts!’ He flinched as anesthetic mixed with pain relievers was injected into him.

‘Hold still, kid,’ the man clad in green said. ‘I know it hurts, but only at first. That pinprick is for numbing all the pain you have endured before we made it here. You’re a big boy. You’re stronger than them. At least, you will be.’

Jack had learned to be mistrusting of strangers, and ever since the ordeal he had just endured, he would flinch whenever someone touches him for any purpose.

‘We are here to save you,’ the dark-haired man said.

‘Mommy and daddy told me to never speak to strangers,’ Jack said, pushing the men’s hands away from his arms with an impressive amount of force for a tortured six-year-old boy who could not even walk at all due to the severity of his injuries. ‘You see, the bad guys and girls here hurt me every day, and on my first day here, they cut up mommy and daddy in front of me, and they forced me to watch. Cut them into little pieces. Red stuff came out from their bodies, and the same red stuff comes out of mine when they hurt me,’ Jack pointed to the large, infected wounds on his arms and legs. He stared blankly into the distance, shuddering at the memory of his parents’ fresh, warm gore spraying his body. For a moment, his mind replayed the bloodcurdling screams of Teresa, his mother, before everything turned deathly silent. Fredo, his father, only grunted, clearly trying his damnedest to maintain a shred of dignity to the very end- true to the stoicism that he always valued when he was alive. ‘That is what talking to _one_ stranger got me. What makes you think I will trust you guys?’ Jack sighed in resignation when he realized that he ended up spilling the beans to two complete strangers anyway. ‘Thanks for the towel, though.’

‘We hunt demons. That is what you call those bad guys and girls, young one,’ the man in black said. ‘My name is Nosferatu, and I am the leader of the Demon Hunter Clan. Everything will be okay. Everything will come to an end. We will get you out of here.’

‘Someday, you will become big and strong. We will raise you as our own,’ the other man said. ‘Lugosi is my name. I am Nosferatu’s main right-hand man and the Chief Medic of the clan. You will become strong enough to hunt them down, too.’

‘Wow, really? Way cool!’ Jack beamed with excitement, the pain already mostly numbed by the anesthetic. ‘I don’t hurt so much anymore. It’s been a while since I felt no pain at all, but I do feel kinda weird and fuzzy right now. Well, whatever you guys are up to, it looks like I’m in. …Will I get to cut those, uh, _demons_ , up into little pieces, too?’

‘Yes, you will. We show the likes of them no mercy,’ Lugosi said eagerly, as though selling to this child the idea of becoming one of them. ‘Nothing lasts forever. Especially not your suffering,’ he looked the boy in his eyes tapped him gently on his shoulder as though to reassure and encourage him, ‘We can change the future together. What’s your name?’

‘Jack,’ the boy said. ‘So, if you are helping me, what about the others?’

‘I…’ Lugosi was about to say that they did not make it or were too far gone, but he stopped for a moment. But quickly, he thought of something to say. ‘They are most likely in a better place, Jack. Their souls have been kissed and welcomed to the Great Beyond by the Valkyrie, Freya. They’re drifting away to a place of peace where Archangel Rafaela will heal them all.’

‘But why did they not take me away from here?’

‘I do not know for sure, but it seems that the fates have brought you to us instead, and someday, we will find out why,’ Nosferatu replied. He then turned to his right-hand man. ‘But at any rate, we must leave this infernal place now,’ Nosferatu said to Lugosi. ‘Orlok and Drusilla are waiting for us by the gates.’ Nosferatu looked at the boy. ‘You must rest, little one. Your new life is waiting for you outside.’ Lugosi cradled and protected the young boy, who soon fell asleep in his arms.

\---------------

The demon hunters had originally intended to raid the underworld to rescue Akivasha, one of their best men, who has not been found for months. Instead, they had found him dead with his wretched, mangled body rotting in a cell- only recognizable by the tarnished badge he kept on throughout the entire ordeal. However, they were able to save a young life with incredible potential to become one of them in a place where there was otherwise only death and decay.

They had taken immense efforts to heal Jack’s wounds, making sure that the boy will not be able to see with his eyes the scars of his past. But this did not happen without him screaming like a banshee in pain when he even just sees them reaching out for the jars of medicine on the shelves in the emergency bay. The boy would apologize profusely every time for being a wuss- a vestige of an old memory he had as a toddler who was taught by his father to shrug off all wounds as ‘just scratches’ and take pain with grit, like a man. He also remembered, with much venom and hatred in his young heart, the most annoying, ear-burning sound _, that shrill, breathy jeer_ that accompanied the demonic, sadistic mirth that juxtaposed his helpless screams in agony. He promised to himself to never scream or cry out again when he was in pain and to instead suffer in dignified silence as Fredo had taught him and had done so until he was a butchered body that finally drew its last, agonized breath. But Jack could not control himself and he broke that promise just as soon as he made it. He was nothing like his father at all.

‘Why? Why do humans cry?’ Jack cried out in anguish.

‘It’s okay. Screaming helps you heal, and so does crying,’ Lugosi said. ‘It is a fact well-documented by the scholars from Eruditio.’

‘Dr. Rooney actually wrote a book on the subject,’ Anita, Lugosi’s wife who was also a doctor, mentioned as she tinkered with some surgical tools. ‘It’s for those who pursue robotics though.’

Jack simply writhed in pain some more, not being able to absorb anything in his mind but his agony. Patiently as they could, the doctors and nurses pressed on, consoling the boy over and over again and reassuring him that everything would be okay, and that they understand that he is in pain. They knew that he would be unable to ever forget the torments he had endured in hell, but making sure that his physical wounds heal completely and without scars was the least that they could do.

‘Nothing lasts forever; we can change the future,’ Lugosi told him gently as he applied salve to the boy’s burn wounds. He was told this over and over again whenever he cried out in pain. He was reinforced with this mindset of hope for each day of his healing to provide for him the strength and fortitude to keep fighting his pain. Nosferatu would visit every day to give Jack some toys to play with, and he took his time to fill the young boy’s otherwise plain hospital room with colorful pictures filled with inspirational quotes to get him going. But of the many quotes of hope he had learned as he read them and they were read to him, the words of Lugosi had been burned into his mind as a mantra, as words for him to live by and return to as a beacon of light when he feels lost.

Lugosi’s son, Vladimir, would tend to him as well, and the teenaged intern who was training to become the next Chief Medic was just as supportive of Jack’s recovery as his father. For all the arrogance and bravado he would show in his combat training classes, he showed nothing but compassion and kindness to his patients.

\---------------

When Jack began to complain about boredom more than pain, Nosferatu gave him a card catalog, downloading the app into his smartphone which had been given to him as a birthday gift when he turned seven. This was the first birthday that he celebrated within the fortress walls. The app was connected to the citadel’s library so that he may enrich his mind and have something to do while he was still bedridden, and whenever a book captured his interest, he would send a message to Bram, the Head Scribe, and the physical book would be brought to him in a few seconds through a particle transmitter on the nightstand beside the hospital bed. Despite the technology being there for traditional, paper books to be rendered obsolete, many people, including Jack, still preferred to flip real, tangible pages.

Literal libraries filled with rows upon rows of tall shelves full of all kinds of books remained relevant even in the midst of advanced technologies that ceaselessly kept improving, sped up even further by the invention of smartphones about ten centuries ago, or 992 years since Alice, the queen of the Blood Demons, was sealed away for the first time. Over time, these phones have exponentially improved in computing power and became more minimalist in appearance, and in the present day, these phones have become as thin as a credit card, clear as glass by default when not in use, and have the same computing power as the supercomputers in military bases during the era when smartphones first became widely available to the public, around a decade since its conception.

Besides, even an exercise as simple as moving one’s fingers to flip a book’s pages would help him with his recovery. The young boy specifically took an interest in books about architecture and landscape design, mostly for the pretty, colorful pictures that were a pleasant, much-needed contrast to the hideous, dull dungeon cell he was stuck in for those months. It was also a nice change of pace from the simple inner-city apartment that he used to call home back when his parents were still alive. Sometimes, he would spend hours just staring at one detailed isometric section drawing and imagining what life must be like in those other worlds depicted within those illustrations.

\---------------

Jack would eventually try to prop himself up without using the bed’s recliner so that he could sit closer to the room’s window, draw the curtains open, and see the view outside in its full glory. He had succeeded, but not without much struggle on his part as well as Nosferatu’s help. The window overlooked an expanse of green and golden farmland and brilliant, blue sky above. The near-flatness of the vast swath of land was broken at some places by rows of trees that bore various fruits.

‘All those lands that you could see from here are still within the fortress perimeter, making the clan a self-sustaining community,’ Nosferatu said, sitting by the window on a pull-out couch where Jack had also made himself comfortable on. This was also Jack’s first time to rest and take a seat somewhere other than a hospital bed or a wheelchair. ‘This is where we grow our all our crops.’

Although the technology was already available for plants to be cultivated vertically in order to save space and still have the same, if not better, nutritional value as crops grown on the countryside like in the old days, there was still nothing that could perfectly capture the calming, serene essence of acres of countryside and wide, open space other than these vast swaths of lush, fertile land in and of themselves. Views of peaceful sceneries like these have been confirmed by centuries of research in hospital design to still be the most conducive to healing. Seeing the great outdoors from his hospital room made Jack more eager to explore the rest of the place and opened up new perspectives for him, but he would have to wait for a while longer. The prospect of finally being able to go out and satisfy his ever-growing curiosities borne from the many books he read and the vast, open land he saw before his eyes strengthened his resolve.

When he became strong enough to transition from soups and purees to solid food, they fed him the finest vegetables and grains straight from the farms that he could see from his room and the best synthetic meat grown at the citadel’s food processing laboratory. Unlike the old ways of fruit and vegetable cultivation that they have preserved through the millennia, raising livestock to send to the slaughter has since become a thing of the past.

‘Like my mom used to make,’ Jack said, savoring his first morsels of ratatouille, the first food he was served which he had to chew to eat.

‘We want you to feel at home here, son. Because this place is your home now,’ Nosferatu replied, smiling at the boy. As Jack tried more of the vast selections of food varieties they have let him sample, the boy specifically took a liking to pizza and strawberry sundae.

Jack was soon able to walk, albeit with crutches. He roamed around the citadel with Nosferatu, wanting to thoroughly explore his surroundings. The massive, brutalist architecture of the fortress fascinated him, especially the family residential sector, which comprised of multistory, cantilevered concrete and glass cubes that seemed to float way above the ground on patches of lush garden plants and wooden pathways that provided some vibrancy, warmth, and color that contrasted themselves to the generally cold, stoic atmosphere of the rest of the built areas of the complex. The place was bustling with life; families were going about their daily lives, normal as demon hunters could try to be. The array of sun beams that seemed to form a straight line as they went through the uniform gaps between the cubes oddly satisfied him.

‘This place is amazing,’ Jack looked on in awe. ‘This looks almost exactly like one of those pictures I saw on a book I have read about the history of the citadel’s architecture through the years.’

‘It sure does. It took generations of us to build the citadel up to the way it is today. A lot of tweaks to the plans here and there as we see fit,’ Nosferatu told him. ‘And someday, you yourself will live in a unit in one of those cubes. You will someday find a girl to start a family with. She will carry more than just your secrets; she will be a strong woman to carry love, to carry children of your own, someone who will make you indescribably happy for the rest of your life.’ Nosferatu was eager about this young boy’s future – wondering who would be the girl to make this boy happy, and more importantly, how many more squires they would produce to carry on the legacy of the Demon Hunter Clan as one of the great factions that protect the Land of Dawn.

‘I want to go to school like every other kid. Turns out this big place also has one,’ Jack then noticed the word ‘school’ on a sign that led back to the fortress sector where the hospital was, not caring at all about girls or starting a family. ‘Is it anything like the old daycare I used to go to? That place was a lot of fun.’

‘Ah, a studious one, aren’t you?’ Nosferatu petted Jack’s light blond hair that had started to grow out and become fluffy. ‘You will go there when the doctors decide that you have healed enough. We have many children here- squires, training to one day become like us.’

‘But I already am feeling okay,’ Jack said. ‘I can already walk, and if I still have any wounds, they’re nothing but scratches,’ Jack boasted, harkening back to the way of grit that his father had taught him. ‘It’s getting boring just lying down in bed and being in the same room day after day after day.’

\---------------

 ‘It’s okay to scream ‘like a little girl’,’ Lugosi said as he applied disinfectant to his few remaining wounds on his lower back that still oozed vile, yellow pus. After an embarrassing and painful incident on his first day of school, Jack decided to heed Nosferatu’s advice to not go to school first until the doctors taking care of him were certain that he was already fully healed.  ‘Don’t let their taunts get to you. We have little girls as squires in the clan, as well, and they are as strong as the boys. Sometimes, they can even do better. My wife Anita had already proven that fact for herself. She graduated the medical training program on top of her class. Drusilla, obviously a woman, is head professor of the Combat Training Department.’

Jack eventually became strong enough, at eight years old, for the doctors to allow him to go to school. He had managed to befriend the other squires who went to the same classes as him despite being humiliated and made fun of when he first attempted to integrate himself into the school setting. Perhaps it helped that he grew to tower over most of them, and it was likely that he would grow to be at least six feet tall when he reaches adulthood. In a way, he had become like his father after all.

He then decided to explore the library, and he would often spend entire weekends perusing every book within its labyrinthine layout of shelves that reached all the way up to the high ceilings. He didn’t skip even the thick, musty tomes beyond his age level despite not understanding even a word in these codices, finding the scent of old paper to be quite pleasant. Despite the overall seriousness and somber ambiance of the citadel with its imposing, silver-gray, brutalist architecture, the colorful children’s corner of the library and the nearby playground and garden connected to the library through a large, transparent automatic door was a sanctuary to him and the squires, where they could still be like normal children- as normal as demon hunters could try to be.

Although he has become strong enough to wander about and run like a normal, healthy child who is free of visible battle scars, the doctors have advised that he should not wander too far away from the Hospital and Elementary School sectors of the fortress or stress himself out too much because he might relapse. He had become fiercely independent and curious for the most part, but being nine years old, he still, deep down, feared being too far from Nosferatu or Lugosi.

\------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, it’s my headcanon that Alucard’s birth name is Jack, and is the guy that Alice asks about in her in-game quote, "Do you know someone named Jack?" The origin of Alucard’s name will be explained in the next chapter. I have actually outlined that Alucard’s childhood and adolescence would only be one chapter long, but my exploration of his character development and building the world around him took this fanfic to a different course yet again.


	2. Nothing Lasts Forever; We Can Change the Future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His physical scars have cured for the most part, but his emotional wounds were only beginning to form as he learns more of himself. His new life as a Demon Hunter would also begin here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have patched a chronological issue in Chapter 1 while I was doing some further world-building and timeline exploration to help me better frame the setting of this story in terms of technological and social development. Instead of the story being set 17 centuries since the smartphone was invented which is a future that is too distant, it is now 10 centuries since, or the technological equivalent of approximately AD 3000 on Earth. 
> 
> The main bulk of this story, when Alucard is 24 years old, is set 2018 years since Alice was sealed away, the dates notated as YSS [Years since Seal] in this fanfic. In both timelines, the smartphone was invented in a time equivalent to AD 1992 on Earth, which was 292 YSS in the previous version, but is now 992 YSS with the timeline adjustment. Previously, Alice would have been sealed in an era equivalent to the Enlightenment Age on Earth, about AD 1700, and setting the story 17 centuries since the smartphone was invented would have set the story at approximately AD 3418, or 2018 YSS. With the adjustment, she would have been sealed away in a year equivalent to AD 1000 on Earth, which is within the Medieval Era in world history. Either way, Alice was sealed about 2000 years before the timeline of this story.
> 
> And so I must warn you now; the triggers only become stronger and more apparent hereon. In case a recap is needed:
> 
> Trigger Warnings – Internalized homophobia, mentions of torture and abuse, religious indoctrination, emotional manipulation, PTSD

Jack had spent four years of his childhood living at the hospital, where the doctors and nurses continued to diligently heal him day in and day out. But this time, he would stay the night at the boys’ dorm, like every other male squire when they turn ten years old. The girls would stay in another dormitory sector separate from the boys. The dorms, for both girls and boys, were large rooms each with ten beds and their respective footlockers, and minimal privacy.

He found it strange that other boys would have no qualms changing clothes right in front of him, and each other as well. Perhaps, he thought, he found it strange because his parents told him to always find someplace secluded to change his clothes and not let anyone see his nakedness or even just more skin than he would show when his shirt was off but had mid-thigh-length shorts on. However, he also felt that it was wrong to see another boy bare and vulnerable, and even a girl as well, if he was not married to her.

When Jack realized that it was normal for boys to change clothes in front of each other without covering themselves up, he speculated that despite near-nakedness among them being a normalcy and even a form of fraternity, he would still be too scared to appear scantily-clad in front of anyone for the demons had denied him clothing back when he was still their captive. It proved difficult for the doctors at times to treat his wounds at his more sensitive areas, but they somehow managed to pull through after much convincing him that everything they were doing was for his recovery, and that they would not violate his young body, especially not in such a state of vulnerability.

This trauma was the reason he had given to his roommates when they thought it strange that he would refuse to disrobe and change clothes in front of them when there was nothing to be ashamed of, and that they were all boys with the same sets of body parts anyway. It was well-known throughout the Demon Hunter Clan that Jack was Akivasha’s replacement, the rescued captive from the underworld who was being raised to be a squire like the other children. Most of the Clan’s children were born into the Clan and lived relatively comfortable lives within the fortress.

But the truth was that Jack believed that the sight of another boy’s show of more skin than necessary in front of him was another kind of wrong; he felt a sort of bizarre tingle deep inside him when he saw Elias, the boy who slept to the bed to his left, stretched out on his bed with a sliver of his sensitive, pale skin at his hips exposed; his black shirt was too short, creating a contrast of color between the dark fabric and light skin. The waistband of his pajamas also lay dangerously low, dipping just below his hipbones that have just started to have some definition to them. Elias lay down in bed on a lazy afternoon one weekend, and his lithe body on the bed in such a relaxed position was quite the sight for Jack’s eyes.

Jack had some sort of idea that he must not feel this way about one of his friends at all, and so he would simply look away to give his friend a semblance of privacy where there was otherwise none. He would also hear his roommates talk about the wonders of girls that they have just discovered for the first time, as though it was some sort of electric spark, a switch that had just turned on for the first time. They wondered what it must be like at the girls’ dorm, if they also changed clothes in front of each other. They talked about what a blast it would be to have invisibility powers and then sneak into the girls’ dorms. Sure, Jack could throw in some banter or two when it came to stereotypical male interests such as cars and sports, even showing fanfare when Johnson performs a successful tackle in a high-stakes football game, but when it comes to talk about girls, he could not relate to their locker room conversations at all. He just doesn’t feel whatever they feel at all, and he would just be deathly silent, only replying with vague one-liners when they asked him for his opinion on whether a certain girl was a one or a ten or in between.

He would also hear some snide comments from his roommates about boys who act like girls, and it was here when he knew, and confirmed, that he was different, that he did not quite belong. Lugosi may have told him that it was okay to scream like a little girl, but this was something else; it was not a scream of agony from years ago. It was his heart and his developing loins that screamed like a little girl, a squeal of excitement laced with nervousness from being infatuated with a boy for the first time in a twisted kind of puppy love and butterflies in his stomach. These bizarre stirrings that continued to direct themselves to his fellow boys began to scare him, and he preferred to spend as little time as possible in the dorm room, going there only for sleep. He would sleep as late as he could and wake up before everyone else so that he could wander off from the dorms and busy his mind with other things instead of his silly infatuations. He much preferred the decency and propriety of outside, even though he had observed that it was all a façade to keep salacious conversations under wraps. And perhaps, being able to look at more girls would straighten him out and make him feel truly ‘like a boy.’

But even when Jack goes to the dorm only for sleep, he would often be terrified at night and remember only the darkness of his old prison cell. The snores of his roommates, despite being merely sounds of peaceful sleep and just plain annoyances at worst, were to him too reminiscent of his neighboring captives that never stopped wailing and screaming in pain, just as he also did. But before he would embarrass himself and disturb his sleeping roommates, he would sneak out and make his way to Nosferatu’s quarters where the lights would be kept on.

This started to happen more often, until such a point in which Jack would always prefer to stay with Nosferatu at night instead of at the dormitory. The Demon Hunter Clan’s leader had taken a profound liking to this boy and treated him as the son he never had, and didn’t mind adjusting to having the lights on even though he very much preferred to sleep with the lights off, if only to comfort him.

It warmed the older man’s heart to know that Jack had found trust in him, when, only a few years ago, he was skittish and afraid, refusing to let anyone near him at all. This had more than made up for the fact that Nosferatu had lost his wife and infant son to demons long ago, and opted out of ever remarrying and having any more biological children out of fear of losing them again. He had since sworn to protect Jack and love him as his own flesh and blood. And yet, Jack was also a squire like every other child within the fortress- this was his main purpose of being here, and why they had raised him as their own. And he would soon come of age to start weapons training and be officially inducted into the Clan. It was only fate that had the right to determine whether Jack would live to seven, seventeen, or seventy. After all, it was also fate that brought Jack to them instead of to Rafaela and Freya.

And yet, he did not know that Jack was still keeping secrets from him. The boy would still keep those crooked infatuations to himself, and every night, he would pray to any god out there that these feelings would go away. He believed that his attractions to other boys were the last vestiges of the trauma from the torture he had endured years ago, and that these experiences and the horrors he had witnessed have twisted him, perhaps irreversibly. He hoped that this was not the case. For all the advanced technology that the Land of Dawn has to offer, it took the doctors within the citadel four years to fully heal him of his physical wounds from the unimaginable tortures that he had endured. Healing his mental and emotional wounds would probably take at least a decade more. But in the meantime, he kept himself busy with a plethora of other things while boys his age would often talk about girls and how to get them. He remembered that his father had told him not to waste any further time on emotions if they would be to his detriment, for they would only get in the way of rational thought.

\-----------------------

Sometimes, Jack would spend the weekend in the amphitheater that overlooked the outdoor arena, where he would watch some teenagers hard at work with mastering how to wield their chosen weapons. He watched Vlad displaying his arrogance and bravado in the field, pushing everyone away to carve his own path with his chosen weapon, a spear that really was a scepter.

‘Wow, is that Dr. Lugosi’s son? The guy who sometimes stands in for him?’ Jack asked Nosferatu, who was seated next to him. ‘What a nasty bully he is.’

‘Only in the battle arena, young man,’ Nosferatu replied. ‘Vlad can be quite passionate about the competitive, sporty aspect of our training- kinda like Johnson when he plays a football championship game on an international stadium. As you’ve noticed back in the hospital, though, Vlad is really a softie deep down. In fact, we as demon hunters should be like that- merciless to demons, but compassionate to all other life in general. And you would be down there in the arena someday,’ the man pointed to the pit, ‘We train our squires in a manner that encourages teamwork- one for all, and all for one. In case you haven’t noticed yet, we as demon hunters do not bear surnames. We are our family. I’m simply Nosferatu- Count Nosferatu if some people really prefer to address me with honorifics. You will someday discard your current name when you turn thirteen, and you will be known by only one name.’

‘Competitive aspect… Hmm… Is this place like one of those ancient coliseums I have read about?’ Jack asked. ‘This place seems an awful lot like one, although the seats look more like the ones in amphitheaters.’

‘Indeed. Every once in a while, we have gladiator-style competitions in which contestants would need to hunt down as many imps as they could. Vlad has been running champion of the teen division for five years now. Alternatively, there’s also the indoor virtual battle cubes, where training happens individually, or sometimes in teams of five, in a video game-like virtual environment where the objective is to destroy turrets to lower enemy defenses, kill enemies along the way to deny them gold to buy better gear, destroy the enemy’s nexus, and in turn, defend yours.’

‘Are the imps virtual, or-’

‘Only in the virtual battle cubes, where they are simply minions that help the enemy team push your towers. But the more competitive kids see no fun in just virtual enemies and AI. There are also tournaments for the virtual battle cubes in the form of ranked games, but the competitions here seem to hold more water and prestige for the squires. The kids seem to think that the battle cubes are for what they call the ‘filthy casuals’, and the Amphitheater Battle Tournament is where it’s at. And it is these more competitive kids that have more potential to become great demon hunters. So yeah, we capture some of the lesser demons in small soul jars instead of outright killing them for use as target practice. The squires enjoy dealing with real demons in their training, and imps should not be too harmful. They’re kinda like the weak blobs of slime you need to deal with when you are a novice in your average RPG.’

‘So that they spend the rest of their lives getting cut up over and over again by the hunters-in-training, right?’

‘Yes. A fate like that serves them right.’

‘So, what happens when we get tired of bashing them in over and over again? It’s bound to happen sometime.’

‘When they are done with, we either dispose of them permanently through a cleansing ceremony in the Temple of Archangels within our fortress, or ship them off to Lab 1718 so that they would be used as test subjects for painful experiments by the scientists there for the sake of technological innovation. It’s a win-win situation. So have you already thought of what weapon you prefer to wield? Will you be a fighter, an assassin, a mage, a support, a marksman, or a tank?’

‘I want a large sword,’ Jack replied. ‘But not too heavy that I need to wield it with two hands. I want a sword large enough to cut a demon in one fell swoop. I want to wash my blade with their blood. Cutting them up and hearing the sound of their flesh tearing is just more… _cleansing_ , than shooting them from afar, y’know?’

‘So you will be a fighter-assassin, then? Like me? You know, kids these days seem to prefer to wield rifles and staves. But swords and melee weapons still do have their place among us as demon hunters. Some demons wear armor or have skin that makes them resistant, sometimes even impervious, to fast-moving projectiles. At worst, sometimes those light-speed bullets could even bounce back at you instead. And most of them think being a tank or a support sucks, thinking you’ll be stuck as either ‘merely a medic’ or a ‘lowly scribe’. Or in the case of tanks, meat shields. Well, just look at Vlad. He _is_ a support, a medic just like his father.’

‘And what about those eggheads that seem to just stay in the air-conditioned, cushy library day in and day out, never getting blood on their clothes or straining their muscles from the pushups, squats, and other exercises most of us would have to do? I myself have some interest in those books, mostly for the pretty pictures to be honest, but I otherwise can’t imagine a life being there all the time.’

‘You mean the scribes like Bram? Sometimes, squires born into our Clan don’t like to fight on the frontlines, or are assessed to be unfit for combat due to physical or mental limitations that our state-of-the-art medical technology still cannot correct.’

‘Don’t like to fight? Ugh, they have just missed out on being cool,’ Jack commented snidely.

‘It’s not like that,’ Nosferatu said. ‘They fight the good fight as well, but in their own way. Like our field medics such as Lugosi and Vlad, they are supports as well. But despite their seemingly more comfortable and secure living arrangements, they still take on the endless, daunting mission to study the different kinds of demons and their strengths and weaknesses. While you guys are asleep, they would be burning the midnight oil, wearing themselves down with burying their noses in picture-less books thousands of pages long and in highly-technical laboratory notes, so that they could create their own dissertations that would improve the way we run things around here, as well as enhance our battle strategies on the large scale. They are quite passionate about what they do that they would sometimes forget to eat, drink, or bathe. They curate all these pieces of information to create the curriculum we have for the squires like you, and they are also responsible for maintaining the anti-teleportation force field and aura within the perimeter of the citadel, which keeps demons away from these walls aside from the imps we use for combat training. If not for them, we would never be able to sleep at night in peace.’

‘And what about those who want to fight but have failed the assessment? What if _I_ fail the assessment?’

‘It’s not really a _failure_ per se. In such a case that someone in the Clan is deemed unfit for combat by the psychological test, we would continue to encourage them to find something that they are interested in and be able to contribute to the betterment of the Clan, and they would specialize from there. We believe that everyone and everything has an adaptive purpose, and sometimes, the fates would veer you away from the things you want and plan out for so long so that you can have something greater. Just like the fact that you are here now, training to become like us, instead of living another kind of life outside these walls. And the assessment, admittedly, isn’t perfect either. It’s not exactly an imperative but more of a recommendation. If you are deemed unfit for combat by the test, you can actually still practice your combat skills, attend classes, and choose to take on missions, but you may actually find the combat side of demon hunting to be much harder than you thought. The assessment is simply a guide for you to decide on a role.’

\---------------

The waif that Nosferatu and Lugosi had saved from the demons grew up to be a tall, handsome boy; he had clear fair skin, and medium-length, scruffy blond hair that he chose to dye silver- the same hair color as Lugosi’s. He had brilliant, blue-green eyes like those of his mother’s. He had come a long way from being the frail, tortured child that they had found chained up in one of the dungeons in the underworld, but he still had a longer way to go before he could become a fully-fledged demon hunter. Jack had passed the psychological assessment for combat fitness and got the recommended role of fighter-assassin just as he hoped, but with the recommendation that he should not take on missions alone unless absolutely necessary.

‘Jack Tobias Walker, it’s time,’ Nosferatu’s voice resonated through the Temple of Archangels, where the high officials of the clan were gathered to witness the official induction ceremonies of every squire within the clan. These ceremonies take place on the day when the child turns thirteen, and on the fifteenth hour; it was the time of the day when Pisces Myxini, the Great Wizard, had sacrificed himself in order to become the crystalline seal that kept Alice away two thousand years ago. If another child was to also turn thirteen on that day, they would undergo the ritual at the same time.

The young boy took Lugosi’s hand in his as they walked down the long, red carpet leading up to the throne where Nosferatu sat. Traditionally, the biological parents of the inductee would walk the child down the red carpet in the great hall, ready to finally let them go and give them up to the care of Drusilla, the Chief Combat Specialist, to begin weapons training after the three-year transition period in which the child would stop living in the family residential blocks and move on to the dormitory. She stood in attention, waiting for him at the end of the aisle. She was holding a long, black box which contained his first sword.

In Jack’s case, as well as for those orphaned before they come of age, the parents would be the doctors and nurses who never gave up on him even when all seemed hopeless and his wounds didn’t seem to heal. As he walked down the aisle, he noticed Vlad, Lugosi’s son who was already wearing the green and white doctor’s coat reserved only for those who had passed the special medical training skill tree. He was already married, his heavily-pregnant wife just next to him. Jack nodded at him in congratulations, and Vlad saluted him in return.

Jack climbed up to the tribune in reverence and he kneeled on the ceremonial prie-dieu as had been the tradition of the Clan ever since its formal establishment back in 1914 YSS, the same year when the Great Crystal that sealed Alice away had broken 86 years earlier than predicted by the ancient prophets. For a short moment, he was lost in the thought of how many people had rested their knees on this cushion on the day that would change their lives. And during that time of the day, the brilliant sunbeams shone directly into the kneeler through a rose window above the throne, bathing him in a rainbow of light. Jack went on to contemplate about how the architects of the fortress really thought of everything, down to the smallest details. The Chief Scribe, Bram, stood to the right side of the throne, on the ambo on which there was an ornate lectern. He was to read from the sacred tome which details the customs of the Demon Hunter Clan.

‘Jack Tobias Walker, you are here on this glorious day, the ninth day of eleventh moon, two thousand and six years since Pisces Myxini, the Great Wizard, had sacrificed himself on behalf of the entire universe to become the Great Seal, a massive green crystal that imprisoned the Apocalypse Queen for almost two thousand years. And because of a need to continue to search for the truth in order to keep the seal intact for longer, Eruditio, the City of Scholars, was also founded on that same year when a ragtag bunch of scholars settled the rich, verdant tropical rainforest in the eastern lands on the Southern Continent. Today, it has been 92 years since the Great Seal had broken, and the same number of years since the formal establishment of the Demon Hunter Clan. And today, also your thirteenth birthday, marks the time when you begin your vows as a demon hunter,’ Bram began and looked to the tome, ‘When you were a child, you talked like a child, you thought like a child, you reasoned like a child. But you are a man now, and you are to put the ways of childhood behind you. Today you have come of age, and as is the custom of the clan, I must now lay down to you the Iron Laws of the Demon Hunter:

 

> _First, you must not swear allegiance to any army_. The Land of Dawn’s many armies are a manifestation of the divisions we have as sentient beings in the mortal realm. Wars between factions weaken us from within. And when we are weak from within, we are vulnerable. And that is how the demons win. When we are cut asunder by disagreements and internal conflicts, we tend to focus on them instead of the bigger, more important issues at hand.
> 
> _Second, you must not spare a single one of demonkind._ We are Demon Hunters. It’s in our name. Our mission is to bring peace into the world, even if it is through a Holy War against these fiends that do nothing but wreak havoc to everything they touch and leave only a trail of destruction and death. We do not know for sure why they exist in the first place, but we don’t care.
> 
> _Third, you must not ever stop carrying out missions._ Just as demons are relentless in their carnage and destruction, we must be as relentless in destroying them. We must never stop until we destroy them at their very roots. It might take generations of us, of thousands of lives taken away, but that is part and parcel of your life, of your destiny, as a demon hunter,’ Bram looked away from the book again to speak from his memory, ‘Although we are to swear no allegiance to armies, we also believe that, as written by a great general from long ago in the ancient Kingdom of Marithé, if our ashes are scattered to the four winds, then that is part and parcel of our job. You must rise, march, run, endure bad weather, go without sleep or food, be isolated in some distant post, and work until you drop.
> 
> _‘Fourth, and most importantly, you must not fall to the ways of the demons_. The only thing we have in common with them is relentlessness. Otherwise, we are opposed to them in every way. The way of the demons is hate and destruction. Our way is love and creation. Love is patient, it is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, nor is it self-seeking. It is not easily angered, and does not hold grudges… unless these grudges are directed to demons, of course. It does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. It never fails. And this love includes love for yourself, for one’s nature and what it demands of you.
> 
> If you really love yourself, you will wear yourself down to fulfill, with pleasure, what your nature as a demon hunter demands of you. You were not born into this world and brought to us by fate simply to feel good and seek empty pleasures. Your labor in this world is indeed worthy of your respect and your effort. Follow your nature as a human being born with dignity in the name of the Almighty, who started as a small, golden seed from which the vast, majestic World Tree sprang, grew forth, and bore fruits in the form of planets, stars, asteroids, and moons. Do not give yourself in to that which is perverse to your nature as a man, which is to produce, to cultivate- to be stewards of the World Tree and all its fruit. You are not to be a mindless parasite that simply leeches resources off of the earth only to give nothing back.
> 
> Thus, there is not a single one of humanity, or elfkind, or other sentient creature, born to be with someone of the same sex, with whom they may not perpetuate new life. They simply leech off of the earth and cause destruction, their copulation fruitless, often even a vector of diseases, and such a union is but a sacrilegious parody of the institution of marriage. Thus, this perversion against nature is one of the ways of the demon. They have forgotten their true natures, abusing their bodies and giving in to lust, bereft completely of love.
> 
> Do not give in to false prophecies, teachings, and lies that sell such unions as love, as they are perpetuated by demons masked as angels. Now, take a moment of silence, and reflect on this. What do you desire, which gives nothing in return to the world? Have you any perverted thoughts that violate the dignity of another? Should you find yourself veering to thoughts that are contrary to your purpose, pray those urges away, reorient your compass to the beacon that will guide you back home.’

Jack prayed in silence, but found no desire in his heart other than to get on with his training so that he could start hacking and slashing into the demons that have tortured him and killed his parents. He had kept his past feelings for Elias as just that- a silly, absurd infatuation that was part of a past when he was still making his first steps to discovering who he is, and right now, he realized that his doubts about his bizarre feelings were correct; these doubts were natural, and they were borne from his instincts. Shame, after all, was a gift from the Almighty, and it was a way to help him discern what is right and what is wrong. Although he still doesn’t like girls the way his friends do, he found that he would most likely remain celibate, like Bram, who, instead of marrying a woman, married his job.

 

> ‘Nor should you give in to the pleasure of violent carnage and bloodshed, or be blinded by lust for power or revenge,’ Bram continued, shattering the silence in a voice that resonated through the temple and jolting Jack awake from his reverie, ‘It is in accordance with the customs of the Demon Hunter Clan to find pleasure in our labor, in ceaselessly killing demons without mercy through whatever means, but with these privileges come the greater responsibility of self-control and temperance, the remembrance of why we are doing all this in the first place – to bring peace to the world. Everything you do must go back to why, to the end purpose of it all. This lust for power caused the fall of Argus, Rafaela’s husband, who roamed the Land of Dawn to vanquish evil and to make sure that no demonic remnants remained after humanity had sealed away The Apocalypse Queen long ago.
> 
> Argus was our patron, back when the Clan started out as a motley crew of refugees hiding away in this church from the world war that tore up the Land of Dawn and heralded the return of the Apocalypse Queen when the seal cast upon her legion had fallen away before hers. Back then, we only had this temple which we have made our place of refuge; it was our home, office, and training ground, everything at once. Unfortunately, Argus himself eventually fell to demons when he had forgotten why he slew them and pillaged and conquered some of their lands. He reveled only in the pleasure of crushing their skulls under his boot heels. It’s gone to a point in which he himself would search for, and even create, wars and conflicts just to find more civilizations to conquer and kill, hence, the War of the Planes that called forth various abominations from the other dimensional planes threatening to wreak havoc upon time and existence as we know it. And soon, an unholy romance blossomed between him and Alice, whom he had freed from her seal. Before his descent into the abyss, there were two statues, one of Rafaela, the other, of Argus, on the reredos behind the throne on which Nosferatu sits at this moment.’

Jack looked at the ornamental alcove behind the throne, on which there were two pedestals, but there was only one statue, the one of Rafaela, that remained. The other pedestal only had a pile of crumbled marble to symbolize the fall of Argus.

 

> ‘But now, it is simply a reminder to us that not even angels are perfect, and they do fall to sin. It brings us back down to earth, and keeps us humble at our core. Although we are to display bravado and arrogance on the battlefield to show demons that we do not fear them, we remember the true purpose of why we are here, and why we have to take time out of lives to pause and think for a moment- to get lost in prayer even for just a short while, optimally before we go to sleep and end the day. Although it is in accordance with scripture that love does not fail, we do commit mistakes at times, but failure is truly defined as that moment in which we ultimately, and on our own accord, fall to demons and stop loving. All in all, it is _love_ that governs the Iron Laws of the Demon Hunter Clan, the reason behind everything that we do. Keep this in your mind, in your heart, in your soul, and you will be on your way to become the best Demon Hunter you can be. Nothing lasts forever. We can change the future.’

Bram went down from the ambo and handed to Jack a tangible copy of the tome, as well as a digital copy downloaded into his smartphone. ’Look to this tome as your beacon of light and as your cornerstone. Read these scriptures, know them by heart.’

‘Rise, Jack Tobias Walker,’ Nosferatu said as soon as the tome ritual ended. Jack stood up from the prie-dieu and climbed a few steps further up to the throne, holding his copy of the sacred tome with both hands as ritual had prescribed. ‘It is time to bless the sword that you have chosen to use in your missions.’

Drusilla also climbed up, and laid down the black box on the altar.

‘Open the box, Jack, but don’t brandish the sword yet. You may, for the meantime, lay down your copy of the sacred tome on the altar,’ she told the boy. Jack opened the box, and he saw before his eyes the large sword he had picked out through the armory’s display cabinet a few days before his birthday.

‘Wow!’ Jack looked on in amazement at the beautifully-crafted weapon. It was similar to the sword that Nosferatu wielded; it was five feet long and a foot wide all in all. Its blade was shiny and silver with geometric, diamond-shaped engravings throughout the length of its shaft. It looked pristine in the box where its perfect glint stood out against the matte, black velvet lining of the box’s interior, but it would soon be encrusted with thick, oozing layers of demon gore.

‘I’m glad that you are pleased with our gift,’ Drusilla said. ‘But that gift is a big responsibility, and to wield this weapon is, in itself, a promise that we make. As such, you must know this with your heart. You must voice it out. Now, Jack Tobias Walker, grip the hilt, and repeat after me:

> _This is my sword._
> 
> _There are many others like it, but this one is mine._
> 
> _It is my best friend, my life. I master the sword as I master my life._
> 
> _Without my sword, I am useless in battle, and without me, the sword is useless._
> 
> _My sword is as sentient and human as I, for it is my life._
> 
> _I will learn it as a brother._
> 
> _I will learn its weaknesses, its strengths, its parts._
> 
> _I will keep it clean and ready, its blade always sharp and free of rust, as I keep myself clean and ready, always sharp and free of rust at all times._
> 
> _We will become part of each other. And because love is the way of the Demon Hunters, this extends even to my chosen weapon._
> 
> _And before the World Tree and the Almighty, I swear this creed. We are defenders of peace, masters of our enemies._
> 
> _So be it, until victory is ours, and there are no demons left. Only peace._

‘And if you ever forget it, the pledge is conveniently at the first page of the sacred tome for you to freely browse as a reference,’ Drusilla closed the box and took it back. Jack gave her a bewildered look. ‘As per tradition, I will keep the sword safe, and you will get it back as soon as you start training. It is too dangerous to let any new inductees hold weapons, as we have learned the hard way decades ago.’

‘Now that you have your chosen weapon blessed, you are now to partake of the cup of sacred wine that all of us had drank from,’ Nosferatu said, offering the ceremonial goblet to Jack. ‘We have kept the same brew ever since the foundation of the clan, and every year, we pour a new batch of wine into the vat. There will always be a bit of the first batch and the latest batch in every drink to symbolize where we all began, and where we will go. Wine was always a comfort to us, even when we were mere refugees seeking sanctuary within the walls of this temple. After all, the Great Wizard’s signature spell was turning water into wine.’

Jack gulped down the cup of wine in one shot, and Nosferatu looked on in astonishment, remembering that it took him three gulps to finish the drink when he himself went through the rite of passage. Now, it was time for the leader of the Demon Hunter Clan to give the inductee a personal message and his new name.

 ‘You have been raised by the Clan doctors for four years of healing from the ordeals you had undergone as a child,’ Nosferatu said. ‘Then, you spent most of your two years as a preteen choosing to stay in my quarters instead of being at the dormitory. I took you in and comforted you, reassured you that everything would be okay, every chance I get. I love you, like the son I would have had but lost to demons decades ago. I never saw him grow, I never got a chance to play soccer or football with him, or teach him about video games and girls. It is through you that I see the fulfillment of my mission as a father, to make up for my inability to save my wife and infant son decades ago.’

He tapped the boy’s shoulder. ‘I’m proud of you, son. Through the years, you have shown fortitude through your pain. You yearn to keep learning, and idleness bores you. Those efforts of yours have paid off so far, and you have earned one of the highest grade point averages of your age group, third only to Lestat and Magda. I can see a bright future ahead of you.’ Nosferatu hugged him tightly for a few seconds, then let go. A single tear rolled down the older man’s cheek.

‘And by the power vested in me,’ Nosferatu’s voice resounded through the temple, ‘You, Jack Tobias Walker, shall now be known henceforth as Alucard. Now go, and fulfill your destiny.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my opinion, it is already a worn-down cliché in works of fiction to see an abused person end up at a facility where, in the hopes of seeking refuge, they would only end up being even more abused than they were before. Bonus points, if the abused happens to be a child or teenager who ends up in the hands of a pedophile. So, why not a story where Alucard is genuinely loved by the Demon Hunters? For all the heavy themes this story would have such as PTSD and internalized homophobia, having the Demon Hunters truly care is a more lighthearted offset from everything.
> 
> It is my headcanon that Alucard’s pre-rework model/Dante doppelganger look is him in his teen years, and his reworked model is him as an adult. This character aesthetic development will be explored in the next chapter, when he becomes an adult and marries Miya. The excerpt of the conversation between them that I have posted on Reddit some time ago would be in Chapter 4 as per my fanfic outline.
> 
> Alucard’s birth date [the equivalent of November 9] in this fanfic is the same as the release of Mobile Legends for iOS. He was born on 1993 YSS, the equivalent of AD 2993 on Earth. Miya’s birthday would be on ‘the eleventh day of seventh moon’ [July 11], the release day of Mobile Legends for Android. In this story, she is a few months older than Alucard. The calendar system in the Land of Dawn, at least in this fanfic, is similar to that of Earth, with 12 months to represent the moon cycles and 365.25 days in a year. Months have 30 days each, but the second, fourth, sixth, eighth, and tenth months have 31 days to make a total of 365 days, with one leap day to be added to the twelfth month every four years.
> 
> The Holy Crystal in-game item, in this story, is a shard of the Great Crystal that sealed Alice away and is a remnant of Pisces Myxini, the Great Wizard who sacrificed himself to become the Crystal. His name actually means ‘Fish Hagfish’ in English. [On another note, TIL that there is a fish-like animal called a lancelet.]
> 
> The sword pledge is a modified version of the Rifleman’s Creed placed into the context and setting of the Land of Dawn.


	3. The Hunt Begins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More of my headcanon of Alucard’s transition from his pre-rework look and personality to post-rework is explored. Alucard tries to pray the gay away, and he meets his first potential heterosexual partner, Ruby. I know, I promised in the previous chapter’s author’s notes that the Alucard and Miya wedding scene would be here. I also planned to include his first encounters with Miya, Zilong and Gossen [spelled this way for this fic] here as well, but this chapter would end up being about 25,000 words long and a very daunting read if I do that, with an update that would take forever because of my perfectionism.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, this took a long time despite my promises of ‘soon’ that dates back all the way to June 2018. Between overtimes at work and a lot of ongoing projects at the firm I work for [I did mention that I am an architect] and actually playing the game [mastering _Fanny_ , to boot] and my other responsibilities, as well as being more inspired to write Alucard/Gusion smut in a separate continuity at some point, this fic ended up on the backburner for a while. Also, while I have already written chunks of this fic that could actually span five chapters, stringing the chunks together in a cohesive manner and proofreading takes me a long time due to my nature of overthinking, sometimes taking me _entire weekends_ to do without much progress.
> 
> That’s why it took this long.
> 
> But before anything else, let me get this out for you all:
> 
>  **Trigger Warnings**. This chapter is going to be more explicit than the average of this entire fanfic, so yeah. More trigger warnings than the usual.
> 
>   * **Explicit Heterosexual Sex, Internalized Misogyny** \- There will also be an explicit straight sex scene in this chapter, which may turn away readers that are here for Alucard/Zilong fluffy goodness, which fortunately will come up in the following chapters and definitely in the epilogue. But for now, there might also be some misogynistic undertones in the aforementioned scene as a result of Alucard’s train of thought in relation to what society expects of him. [Has a skip indicator.]
>   * **Shipwrecking -** I will probably get flamed to hell and back for this like Alucard in his actual lore, but I am going to rip apart the Alucard/Ruby ship in this chapter for the sake of this story’s plot. I actually _do_ support the Alucard/Ruby ship otherwise as a potential pairing in a separate continuity where Alucard is straight or bisexual, but for the purposes of this story, it needs to be ripped apart to shreds. [Is part of the plot, no skip indicators.]
>   * **Dubcon, Female-on-Male Attempted Rape, Roofies -** A scene involving Alucard and Ruby later in this chapter involves this. Ruby will be an antagonistic yandere-type character for the first few chapters, but she is planned to do a Heel Face Turn and I will explain the full motivation behind her questionable actions later on. [Has a skip indicator.]
>   * **And the usual stuff - Internalized homophobia, mentions of torture and abuse, religious indoctrination, emotional manipulation, PTSD.**
> 

> 
> As stated previously, I am considering all the lore only until Selena, and I waited until her release date to re-examine her background story and fully flesh out the by-chapter outline because she will be a major character in the later chapters of this fanfic. **With that said, all heroes released after Selena will not be in this fanfic, and any potential contradictions to the lore as presented in this fanfic are a natural result of canon divergence.**
> 
> Future lore from the moment Aldous/Aulrad appears in the Land of Dawn may become parts of a potential sequel to this fanfic. The Jade Path official comic is gonna change some bits of my story as well. With several heroes being unexpectedly released before Selena such as Uranus, Chang’e, and Kaja, I rewrote much of the story to fit them in the lore as well. Especially Chang’e, because Zilong is a major, major character in this fanfic as you have probably been all spoiler’d in advance by now that this is an Alucard/Zilong fanfic first and foremost.
> 
> I am also aware that Moonton is now fleshing out the lore of the Land of Dawn with the Conflicts of Dawn event and the novelette they have written about Lunox’s backstory, but since I have written much of my own lore and came up with my own version of the history of the Land of Dawn before I learned of this event, I am keeping the lore that I have made, with Pisces Myxini, my OC who does not actually appear alive in this story, being the Great Wizard and messianic figure who sacrificed himself to seal Alice away. I have received the news, as well, that Zilong/Freya will be the Christmas 2018 couple, and Gusion/Lesley will be the Valentines 2019 couple with a thankfully less cringetastic theme than this year’s Valentines. In this fic, all these characters will appear but with different partners. [Lesley is a lesbian in this fanfic, and Gusion/Gossen, as you may know by now, will be one of Alucard’s prospective love interests.]

Alucard has become a high-ranking Demon Hunter with the Fighter-Assassin role. At first, he often went on missions with his childhood friend and roommate Elias, who was now named Alaric, and Elvira, his girlfriend. Alaric became a Mage and Elvira became a Marksman. While Lestat and Magda, the academic top-notchers who were great with books and the more scholarly aspect of becoming a Demon Hunter, ended up becoming Support characters that specialized in demonology research, it was Alucard who was the best at actually doing the bloody, combative parts of the job.

Although it was in his psychological assessment recommendations that he must not go on missions alone unless absolutely necessary, Alucard still had a tendency to be stubborn and take on missions by himself without informing anyone else, wanting to be the Lone Hero. He had this mindset of always keeping himself busy so that he could take his thoughts off of his troubles, and he never understood why some people preferred to be passive observers and bystanders when there’s always so much to do. He strongly adhered to the tenet of the Clan to never stop carrying out missions. He did not want to risk his mind wandering back to those impure thoughts about Alaric even when he so much as idles for some time.

Alucard would often have these thoughts when going on missions with his childhood friend and sometimes get accidental glimpses of him naked. The image of his ample, thick cock and shapely bubble butt was forever burned into Alucard’s mind as something that he could never touch no matter how much he wanted to. Alaric paid no mind to Alucard seeing him, however, considering that they were both men who have the same parts, as Alaric always said back when he and his roommates shamelessly changed clothes in front of each other seemingly without any erotic undertones to it, which caused much discomfort to Alucard who, back then, was still learning of his odd desires and predilections.

Alaric’s body had become well-developed through years of combat; he was slimmer than Alucard by a considerable margin. He was sinewy with a streamlined swimmer’s built. Alaric did not use much brawn and brute force due to him being a Mage unlike Alucard who was a Fighter-Assassin, but being physically fit was still required of a Demon Hunter regardless of combat role. Fitness and good health, after all, were the visible signs of one who ceaselessly takes on missions and persistently improves oneself.

Likewise, Alucard grew up to become a conventionally-attractive man with a cadre of female suitors. His features were sharp, angular, and masculine, emphasized by his piercing blue-green eyes. And on his face, he often wore a proud smirk that would rile up his admirers even more than when he smiles. He was well-built with an imposing, muscular frame, and at his adult height, he stood five feet, eleven inches tall. His skin was smooth, free of scars, with a clear and fair complexion. He had light blond hair which he had since stopped dyeing silver, and it was now a modern pompadour instead of a mop cut. He had come a long way from being the waif that the Clan had rescued from the underworld and being the edgy, gothic teenager who wanted to resemble various video game characters.

Now, he himself had become like those video game heroes he had idolized as a pubescent boy, and he had established his own identity by setting apart his appearance from the characters that he’d looked up to and imagined himself to be like. In fact, he had just gotten the high score for three years in a row in Demon Body Count and Quests Completed, which the clan kept track of through a special app similar to a video game. The RPG-like, competitive system in which the Demon Hunter Clan ran kept morale amongst the clansmen generally high. He still kept some of his rebellious edginess, though, for he did not outgrow his penchant for heavy metal music (which was actually _metalcore_ ), motorcycles, violent video games, leather, pentagrams, skulls, and the colour black. These things had truly become parts of his personality rather than manifestations of teenage rebellion and the pursuit of an identity.

Alucard had rejected all his suitors through the years. He refused to take a beard because he did not want to be a liar and a heartbreaker if only to appease society’s expectations for him to find a nice girl, marry her, and have children. He had resigned himself to the fact that unlike Alaric, his childhood infatuation who was now in a happy romantic relationship with Elvira, he would most likely become celibate like Bram.

* * *

Alucard drifted away from his childhood friend as he embarked on even more solo missions to fill his schedule to the fullest, leaving Alaric to only be with Elvira. As a result, the couple became closer and closer through the years, and Alucard would not be surprised to find that they are already married without him knowing, given that he was the type of guy to be generally indifferent about social media and small gossip.

Perhaps, this was the Divine Creator’s purpose behind why Alucard could not become attracted to women, if ever by chance the scriptures about being gay as a sickness of the soul were to be proven wrong by science- if ever he was actually _born that way_ instead of twisted by the torments of his hellish childhood. After all, one of the secondary tenets of the Demon Hunter Clan, as he had read in the Sacred Tome, was that truth should override any present scripture that contradicts it. The tenets in the tome were subject to change and revision as understanding of the world, and therefore the workings of the Divine Creator, was improved through a rigorous search for the truth in scientific pursuit. But realistically, even though the scholars at Eruditio would ever confirm and conclude with solid, indisputable evidence that being gay is, indeed, an inborn, immutable trait, people would still generally think of it as a curse from the gods rather than another normal, healthy form of sexuality, and in cultures that believed in reincarnation, a punishment for bad karma in a past life that could only be rectified by complete celibacy.

He understood the advantages of being single for the rest of his life. By not burdening himself with the duties of a husband and a father and with the given problems of being in a relationship, he would be able to do more as a Demon Hunter and fulfil, to the utmost absolute, his sworn duty to never stop taking on missions. However, deep down, he continued to hold on to hope that he would eventually find the right woman, and thus, he continued attempting to straighten himself out by going to places where there would likely be many beautiful women, such as beaches and bars. He prioritized taking on missions located close to those areas.

Perhaps it was the fact that the prospect of heterosexual, procreative romance and marriage was always being touted to him as the One True Path. He’d always hear about it in overplayed, sappy love songs on the radio, in cheesy, obnoxious advertisements of just about every product imaginable, in random metaphors about romance and love interspersed in everyday social interactions and banter whether he was part of the conversational circle or not, and in almost every story he could think of, regardless of genre, that it often felt as though the romance subplot was simply being shoehorned in for some reason, or more likely, no reason at all. Not only that, but also, on a subconscious level he felt that he needed a partner- a companion for life. After all, in his psychological assessment, it was recommended to him that he should not go on missions alone. Deep down, he feared loneliness, the same state he was in when he was tortured by demons in the underworld- when he lost his biological parents, Fredo and Teresa, to them.

* * *

 

Alucard’s once-youthful, clear voice had become irreversibly raspy, strained, and deep from all the heavy smoking and drinking back in his teenage years after missions in faraway lands. He vividly remembered the first cleansing, burning drops of booze down his tender throat and the first wisps of strong-smelling cigarette smoke wafting through his nostrils. He was seated languorously on a black chesterfield sofa on the loft of a nightclub on the 30th floor of some Art Deco building that overlooked the central business district of Antonerei. These intense sensations, along with the brilliant, violet lights and the strong bass of electronic dance music thumping through his bones, served to numb his troubles, even for just a while. Somehow, he never let slip, despite his haze of inebriation, that he is a homosexual.

He was able to go to bars as a minor by having a fake ID that could bypass the age-detection technology of the entrance doorways that first led to a vestibule as a second layer of security. The age detection tech worked by scanning the skin, cells, hair, and bones of every person that entered, and the fake ID was a chip that tricked the scanner’s rays. As a rule, if there was a new technology that got invented, someone was always going to find glitches in it and figure out how to exploit it and bypass any encryptions, especially if said technology was a security device.

Later on, Alucard went to a few strip clubs in several attempts to straighten himself out, but he got bored with watching scantily-clad and naked women dance salaciously in a way that degraded themselves, instead opting to drink and smoke and look blankly into the distance or check his phone to blend in with the crowd and numb his thoughts despite the passivity of being an idle spectator, which he hated. He’d rather be out there taking on another mission rather than wasting his time on something he was not interested in in the first place although he knew that he was doing this for a good cause- to become healed of his grave spiritual and psychological affliction that twisted his desires. Most of the time, he went into these places with his fair-weather friends who also had fake IDs. He would often end with a bored sigh, leaving the club earlier than his companions and restlessly tossing and turning in bed alone at the various hotels where they checked in for the night.

As a matter of fact, the Demon Hunter Clan had no such rules against drinking, strip clubs, and premarital [heterosexual] sex, all done in moderation. As a rule, Demon Hunters were allowed to enjoy material, sensual, and worldly pleasures for they were gifts from the Divine Creator, but only in moderation. To the Demon Hunter Clan, the pursuit of pleasure becomes the way of the devil when done in greed, when one performs perfunctorily on their missions in exchange for these empty pleasures, and when there is intent to bring harm unto others. And from these pleasures, something must be produced. Through enjoying these pleasures, one must have produced the motivation to keep fighting to make the world a better place.

And soon enough, when Alucard turned eighteen and had no more need for the fake ID, he mustered up the courage to hire a hooker. After he had finished another solo mission that took him to the deserts of the western parts of the Southern Continent, he ate dinner at an adults-only dining lounge of The Rose Ginger, a small hotel by an oasis in the Western Sandsea at the Southern Empire of Penumbra. He had his eyes on a young lady working the tables aside from offering her special services. She was about twenty years old, and she stood around five feet two inches tall without her camel-coloured, four-inch stiletto heels. She wore a short, skin-tight orange dress that flaunted, rather than covered, her body. And when she bent over, which she often did to market the goods: her firm, shapely buttocks clad in a skimpy, lime green thong could be seen in plain sight. Perhaps it helped that she had her strawberry blond hair cut like a boy’s, in a mop cut that framed her youthful face with her big, olive green eyes. Unlike most of the special-service waitresses in the lounge, she wore little-to-no makeup, with only face powder, clear lip gloss, and well-groomed eyebrows drawn in with light brown pencil to enhance its natural thickness.

The aforementioned young woman walked up to the table where Alucard ate his platter of steak alone upon noticing him looking at her. "Hello, handsome," she coyly greeted her prospective client. "What is a fine, young man like yourself doing alone in a place like this?" She crossed her smooth, tanned legs, brushing her high heels up against Alucard’s calves. Alucard felt nervousness at this flirtatious gesture, and he only grunted in response.

"So, you’re one of those dark, silent types," the woman continued, "I do offer my services for a night. You seem to have lots of tension in there that needs release. Name’s Diane. Better remember it, sugar."

"Uh... sure,"Alucard said. This was it; he really was going to have sex with a woman, and Diane would be his first. A female prostitute would surely be a better choice of partner than any man. "How much do you charge for an hour?"

"A thousand Thaler per hour. This babe’s gotta eat and pay the bills, too, sweetie."

"Sounds good to me," Alucard replied with a voice bereft of emotion.

"You do have a room, right?" Diane asked, running her forefinger down the middle of Alucard’s long, blue coat and back up to the Demon Hunter Sigil that he had pinned to his coat.

"I, uh… I s-sure do,"Alucard stuttered.

"You seem rather nervous, darling. Is it your first time availing of these kinds of services?"

"Y-Yeah," Alucard replied, standing up to lead the way with Diane promptly following him. Although he was already feeling wrong about what he was about to do, he willed himself to press on, hoping that this experience would remove his urges for other men. After all, pick the lesser evil they said.

"It’s normal for a first-time Johnny to feel that way," Diane said, "But once we’re both naked and touching each other all over and on the bed, your confidence should build up." The walk to his hotel room was dreadfully silent after Diane said something more that Alucard paid no attention to at all. She kept quiet from then on when he did not respond to her words, taking it as the blood going to his head in excitement. Tension filled Alucard’s mind at the thought of doing something that disgusted him to the core, but to him, at the end of the day, it was a necessary kind of disgusting, kinda like having to wipe clean the demon giblets and oozing blood off of his sword after every battle.

\-------------------- **The explicit straight sex scene starts here** \--------------------

Alucard closed the door to his suite behind him, and Diane wasted no time stripping down, revealing a smooth, toned, petite body that had small perky breasts with round brown nipples hardened by the cool air coming from the ice magic-powered dais in the corner of the suite, a flat stomach, and heart-shaped buttocks. She was also completely shaved and smooth down below. Alucard simply stood there and stared blankly at her, still feeling nothing.

"What are you waiting for?" Diane asked, drawing herself closer to him. Alucard knew that this was supposed to feel good, but there was nothing. He could only sense her skin rubbing onto the heavy fabrics of his coat while she undid its straps and buckles to open it, but there was nothing more in the way of emotions that he could draw from it. "Or is it your thing to stay clothed while you fuck me senseless?" Diane stopped undoing the latches on his coat. "Anything you want, sugar, as long as you don’t physically injure me. It’s your pleasure you pay for, after all, and not mine."

As though on her command, Alucard sighed like he was conceding defeat to her words, taking off his clothes. He went to the suite’s king-sized bed where the prostitute already awaited him. She lay down on the white, cashmere sheets, stretched out and spread out to completely expose her naked body to him.

"Nice body you got there," Diane complimented his physique. "All that demon hunting must have paid off real well."

"Uh… Thank you," Alucard replied awkwardly, the pleasantry being the only thing he could think of to say at the moment. Diane was the first person to ever see him naked in a sexual context. The first time that anyone has ever seen him completely naked, aside from his parents who taught him to bathe himself, was back when… he stopped his train of thought right there before the pain would overwhelm him, before he’d even so much as show an involuntary physical reaction to this sudden millisecond of traumatic, hellish flashbacks. He had to show as much stoic masculinity, strength, and dominance to this whore as possible if he was to straighten himself out. The last thing he needed was to emotionally break down in front of her and wind up playing the role of the woman, and _especially_ the damsel in distress. In this situation, he was supposed to be the dominant client, she was the submissive whore, and she was to pleasure him- not be his crying shoulder.

Diane beckoned her client to go inside of her, and Alucard reluctantly entered after he put on the rubber which the hotel had in stock on their nightstands at all times. Slowly, he pushed the head of his dick in, offering a short, silent prayer before he disappeared inside of her. He had just lost his virginity, thinking that actually having sex with a woman will bring sense back to his loins and straighten him out. After all, hiring a whore was different from having a beard. He paid her, fucked her robotically until she faked her orgasm when they had been going through the monotonous rhythms for around forty-five minutes. Alucard had only asked to switch positions once at around the ten-minute mark, with Diane on all fours with her butt up rather than with her back against the bed as they had done prior. For a moment he thought of putting it up her ass, but decided against it, knowing where that brief fantasy would lead, and considering the fact that she was unprepared. And then, when the hour was over, they parted ways like nothing happened. Alucard walked to the bathroom to emotionlessly flush the used condom down the toilet.

\-------------------- **The explicit straight sex scene ends here** \--------------------

The contrived sex with her felt empty. He thought that maybe having the emotional attachment to a woman should do it, which sex with a prostitute lacked. Diane didn’t even kiss him, and all he did was push himself inside her pussy and pull out repetitively in a near-constant rhythm like a metronome. There was no other stimulation done- almost no foreplay, no fingering, no cuddles, and no afterglow of an orgasm to bask in. She just up and left as soon as her time is up, and only thanked him for his honest payment as she put her clothes back on as though nothing happened. But it was like that; to Alucard, nothing happened. And to Diane, he was merely like a single drop in the oasis near the hotel, one man amongst hundreds she had serviced, nothing special. Turning left in the hallway three doors away from Alucard’s suite, she soon entered a door to another suite for another job.

Alucard felt nothing but shame and guilt. He’d felt a pang of guilt from what he had just done, because he had produced and created nothing from his session with her, not even pleasure itself. He felt only shame, for there were some points in their mindless fucking when he’d imagined Diane to be ‘Duane’ instead. That one switch in position around ten minutes into the mind-numbing hour was too reminiscent of what he wanted to do with another man and the fact that he did not want to see her face and breasts. Perhaps it didn’t help that she had her strawberry blond hair cut like a boy’s, in a mop cut that framed her youthful face with her big, olive green eyes. Alucard sighed in resignation and took a swig of the strong booze that was on the suite’s minibar to drown how filthy he felt in that moment, and it was not the pleasantly debauched kind of filthy being touted in many an erotic story, especially not like how it was in that new, popular romance novel about half a hundred variations of grey that Elvira seemed to obsess about much to Alaric’s exasperation.

Lying in bed still naked under the soft cashmere sheets that smelled faintly of Diane’s cologne, Alucard offered a silent prayer to any gods that may be listening to him in his sinful state. Although the likelihood was increasing that the gods have become deaf to his pleas, he took another chance with them. Faith was the only coping mechanism that he could think of when all else fails. He started by apologizing for his sin of indulging without creating anything, not even pleasure, for hiring Diane as a paid sexual partner even though she had given her consent to him the moment he had engaged in a transaction with her. He felt wrong about the entire thing even more so when she had mentioned that her pleasure did not matter in their exchange, and to Alucard, it was as though he was simply forcing himself on her while neither of them felt any kind of pleasure at all, and it was simply an hour wasted, a thousand Thaler senselessly squandered, which he could have spent on something else that he would either want more or need more than a mindless, meaningless, emotionless hour with some hooker girl he could not even form a connection with.

Nevertheless, he prayed for Diane as well, remembering that she is human and sentient too, that she may find something better to do with her life than that, and that she may start caring about her pleasure. Alucard then thought of how many men and women out there had attempted to do the same things he had done and felt the same pang of shame and guilt afterwards, and he prayed for himself and for them, that they may all succeed in changing their ways to realign their attractions to the correct gender. Alucard concluded his prayer by acknowledging that his difficulties in grappling with his twisted desires were trials from the Divine Creator meant to make him a stronger man, and that if He did not will him to turn straight in the blink of an eye, he implored the gods to bestow him with the grace and blessing of strength to press on.

* * *

Alucard felt that those prayers have been answered three years after that awkward, unpleasant first time when Nosferatu had told him of Flavia, an initiate to the Clan that he would need to train in the field after she finishes her five months of basic training. She was a young lady eighteen years of age, with short stature, a voluptuous figure, bright, green eyes, and wavy, blond hair that suited her birth name. In some ways she resembled Diane, but her hair was longer, she was a few inches shorter, and she looked much more feminine.

Flavia had joined the clan after she lost her family to the Dire Werewolves, and since then, she swore to create happy endings for every story through her journeys in the Land of Dawn. Demon Hunters who were not born into the Clan, or in Alucard’s special case, adopted, who were at least 13 years old may join the Clan voluntarily and undergo alternate equivalency training before they undergo the same coming-of-age rituals as the Clan-born. The program, which involved weapons handling, intense physical exercises, field combat training, and combat strategy, would last for 22 weeks, alongside demonology classes on one physical rest day for each week. To enter, one must have passed a basic physical fitness test and a psychological and psychiatric assessment before equivalency training could be started.

The Clansmen were impressed with Flavia’s combat skills with her scythe despite her diminutive size that made her chosen weapon look disproportionate and too big for her, as well as her passion to do genuine good for the world underneath all her bloodlust. Although her psychological and psychiatric test results were rather shaky considering the neurological effects of her then-recent meal of the Wolf King Haas’s raw, still-beating heart, she was considered to be highly eligible to become a Demon Hunter, provided that she undergoes the correct training to discipline herself and channel her strong urges always towards the Clan’s cause so that she wouldn’t end up like Argus, the fallen angel who succumbed to bloodlust for the sake of it.

Flavia was diligent in her studies and determined in her training. Sometimes, she would stay awake into the night, mastering the art of wielding her chosen weapon. She had become acquainted with many of the Demon Hunters, but she had never seen Alucard in those five months she had spent studying the ways of the Clan, not even once. Alucard continued to keep himself busy in those months as usual. She knew that Alucard was a handsome man, and the moment she found a recent picture of him on his barely-used social media accounts, she was immediately smitten. And knowing that he was, surprisingly, still single and had never been in a relationship since ever, Flavia pressed on, working herself off even harder so that Alucard would notice her.

* * *

 

"Ruby, you’ve been here for a while now, getting to know your way around the Citadel and being acquainted your colleagues. You’ve diligently studied the tenets of the Clan and have shown your passion for what we do," Nosferatu told Flavia, who had just earned her Demon Hunter Name of Ruby, during her official induction ceremony. "And now, it’s time for you to begin taking this outside, to field training. Alucard, one of the best we have, will train you in the ways of field combat. You will go with him when he takes on missions, and from there, you will observe his ways and follow his example as an outstanding member of the Clan. He’s been on top of the Demon Body Count Leaderboards for three years in a row now, a real MVP."

Flavia was immediately smitten the moment the entrance door to the Great Hall opened and she saw the tall, handsome, blond man smile at her and introduce himself as Alucard. To her, he looked even better in real life than in his few photos on his nearly-empty social media account.

Nosferatu had also assigned her to Alucard as a way to set him up with a girl. The Clan Leader was honestly wondering why his adopted son still doesn’t have a girlfriend, let alone even had one at all, at the age of twenty-one despite various women finding him attractive, clearly evident with his cadre of suitors and the thousands of likes he gets on those rare moments when he would post a selfie on his underused social media accounts. Even from Alucard’s childhood, Nosferatu was already eager to see him finding a girl he could be happy with: someone beautiful and sweet, a woman stronger than anyone he would know, to carry more than just his secrets- to carry love, to carry children of his own. Although Nosferatu acknowledged Alucard’s free will and therefore his choice to become celibate like Bram, he preferred that his adopted son would find a partner, owing as well to the result of his psychological assessment that Alucard must not have to take on the world alone.

Seeing another prospective girl that could cure him of his affliction, Alucard would, more often than not, go with Ruby and diligently train her on the field. After passing her post-basic training assessment test, Ruby was recommended the Fighter/Off-Tank role due to her ability to continuously disable enemies with her scythe and her surprising amount of physical endurance and pain tolerance for being such a petite girl under five feet tall.

Although he was still a red-blooded gay man at the moment, he recognized that Ruby was an attractive, pretty young lady with a curvaceous figure, smooth skin, wavy blonde hair, and emerald green eyes. And while she was covered up for the most part, even opting to wear a hood and a heart-shaped eyepatch, she wore her skirt dangerously short to show off her strong, ample thighs which were accentuated further by her stockings. When Alucard asked her about it, she would tell him that a short skirt would help her move freely as well as serve as a momentary distraction to her enemies if they catch glimpses of her skin underneath, allowing her more time to manoeuvre her scythe to continuously stun them.

Alucard just nodded in agreement, acknowledging that different combatants have their own various ways and strategies of performing at their most efficient, although he found Ruby’s methods to be rather unorthodox, somehow reminiscent of a certain demon. He was unsettled by how her answer, especially the notion of weaponized anasyrma, was incongruent with her sweet, innocent-sounding voice. Perhaps that was the whole gist of Ruby’s imagery, that eerie dissonance between the audio-visuals of a petite, sweet-looking girl and her femme fatale tactics in battle combined with her tendencies towards bloodlust.

Surely, he should feel a strong sense of masculinity and an urge to protect her because of their huge height difference, with Ruby being 4’9 and him being 5’11. But he did not feel that kind of desire for her even if he tried to do just that. Rather, he hoped that the man she would end up with would treat her well. Otherwise, that asshole of a man would have to go through him for treating his student and friend like that. But it was not even like that for the two of them.

In fact, it wasn’t even Alucard who was protecting Ruby.

Rather, it was Ruby who would tank for him and keep his recklessness in check, luring and distracting the enemies, taking some of the hits so that Alucard could attack more efficiently and get the job done with fewer injuries on his part. In a way, their dynamic was that of a little girl protecting a tall, muscular guy who looked at least three times stronger than her. On missions wherein they have worked together, Ruby would often do an exceptional job baiting the demons who would foolishly assume that her short stature and innocent, youthful appearance meant that she was weak. She would then disable and incapacitate them with her dexterous scythe spins and manoeuvres, and Alucard would swoop in and finish them all while they were in a weakened state. Together, the two became a formidable force against the legions of demons that ceaselessly caused terrors throughout the Land of Dawn, and their numbers seem to have dwindled because of the two.

Heroic stories of two saviours, Big Blue Coat and Little Red Hood, soon spread throughout the Land of Dawn. And with that, rumours eventually spread throughout the clan that Alucard finally got his first girlfriend after twenty-one years, and despite it being not true, Ruby herself wanted this to be true. While she started out already smitten with Alucard as soon as she saw a picture of him, her feelings and desires for him only deepened as time went on and as they embarked on more missions together.

More often than not, Alucard and Ruby had to share a hotel room after missions in faraway lands because of budget constraints that have been affecting the Demon Hunter Clan lately due to a worldwide financial crisis. And of course, Alucard would ever so chivalrously offer the entire bed for Ruby to have to herself if the suite only had one bed, while he crashed on the floor, the couch, the desk chair, or the armchair, whichever was available in the suite. The longer Alucard did not formally affirm that he indeed reciprocated his feelings for Ruby, the more her desires plunged and bordered into lust and obsession. It wasn’t fair that she would create happy endings only for other people’s stories; she wanted a happy ending of her own. This went on for several more months.

\-------------- **Dubcon Ruby/Alucard Scene begins here; skipping this will end the chapter** \----------------

"Are you shivering? You’re shaking and all flustered, Alucard. So those rumours are true after all? You really do like me? Are you excited for me? Let’s dance!" Ruby practically breathed the words into Alucard’s skin as she ran her manicured fingertips through his bare chest, her voice and warm breath becoming more seductive by the minute to a straight man.

Alucard only grunted in response. He felt a strange sense of discomfort with her advances, but he did not tell her to stop despite his apparent shuddering movements beneath her hands, which Ruby took for a mix of anxiety and excitement, only spurring her on even further with a glint on her striking, green eyes that was different, almost predatory, like she wasn’t quite herself. Rather, she was a more… _extreme_ version of herself. She did enjoy the feeling of chasing prey in battle, but this time, _Alucard_ was the prey. The waistband of his loose sweatpants hung low on his hips, to the point that just a small downward tug would reveal him to Ruby. Thankfully, Ruby hasn’t lost enough of her self-control to do that just yet. Hell, she hasn’t even made attempts to kiss him yet.

"Ohhhhh… Looks like someone is overly eager…" Ruby continued raking her hands up and down Alucard’s body. She then dug her long, red fingernails into his skin and started straddling him still fully-clothed while he just lay down on the hotel bed lazily in his exhaustion and stupor from the combination of a heated battle and three glasses of wine to wash down the day, with his body shuddering near-involuntarily to her touches. For some reason, he’s been feeling quite a bit of a headache despite not having drunk that much wine in the first place. Much of what happened between entering the suite and suddenly finding himself scantily-clad on this king-sized bed with fully-clothed Ruby on top of him was merely a blurry haze. Nevertheless, he hoped that a woman’s touch would straighten him out even though he started to feel like he was flitting in between different states of consciousness.

"Stop it!" Alucard suddenly blurted out when he recognized that Ruby was drawing her face closer to his in an attempt to kiss him and felt her hands on the waistband of his sweatpants, ready to pull it down. That was where he drew the line, and in his drunken stupor, he managed to coherently remind her, in between random hiccups, of the professional relationship between a trainer and his protégé.

"I… I’m sorry…" Ruby hung her head downwards in shame, the dangerous glint in her eyes suddenly gone. "I… your drink…" Ruby shook her head in apparent disapproval of her own actions from earlier, but she could not bring herself to tell Alucard outright that she had added something to his wine while he wasn’t looking.

"Just pretend that none of this ever happened, okay?" Alucard replied curtly as he struggled to get up from the bed in his inebriation, holding on to the waistband of his sweatpants to keep what was left of his modesty. "You can have the whole bed to yourself; I’ll settle for the couch."

Haunted by his nightmares again after a short nap on the couch, Alucard simply stayed awake and sat on the oriel window with his back facing the bed as he cried silently to the large glass, after which he spent the rest of the night reading a demonology book he had downloaded on his phone. Soon enough, Alucard had to dispel the rumours on his social media account to quell the gossipers. He opted not to tell anyone about exactly what had happened between him and Ruby, thinking that such a subject would only be seen with mockery because of the fact that he was the one who got drugged instead of the girl, and that his disagreement with her offer would most likely out him as a homosexual.

Unlike Diane, Ruby was someone Alucard knew and developed a connection with. He knew her story and the things that made her human, unlike Diane who to him was just a random hole he pushed himself inside of. Diane kept to herself and only talked about and did her job, which left him no chance to get to know her at all. He knew that Ruby liked caramel apples, pop music from the small northern islands in the Eastern Empire of Mayumi, and kittens. And just like him, Ruby also lost her family to evil beings, but unlike him, she was actually crazy enough to eat the _raw_ heart of her assailant while he wouldn’t want to ever eat demon meat even though the slab of abominable flesh was cooked to perfection and made into a fancy steak by a certain foul-mouthed, world-renowned celebrity chef whom he idolized. However, he still didn’t feel any kindling of passionate desire for Ruby at all, and especially not after what just happened. Alucard had asked Nosferatu to reassign her to another trainer, preferably a woman, glossing over the entire reason why.

\------------------- **Dubcon Ruby/Alucard Scene ends here** \---------------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing Alucard’s discomfort with fairly attractive women making advances on him was, honestly, actually a challenge to me as a bi guy [around 4 on the Kinsey scale]. It’s honestly hard for me to imagine what it is like to not be sexually attracted to an entire sex at all, so much of Alucard’s reactions were just my extrapolations based on stories I have read. I felt tempted at some points to add more passion and emotion to the straight scenes, but it would be OOC for gay!Alucard to think that way.
> 
> On another note, I am now officially a fudanshi. As in, an actual yaoi fanboy. I’ve been a long-time fan of slash fics and other forms of fiction that depict same-sex relationships, but actual BL/yaoi is a different ball game. I have been put off of it before because of its reputation of romanticizing rape and having the heteronormativity of established gender roles of top and bottom as male and female respectively despite the genre supposedly being focused on same-sex romance. But with that said, I just got into the _DRAMAtical Murder_ fandom recently. Very late I know. The visual novel was released in 2012 and here I am in late 2018 listening to Aoba Seragaki’s moans remixed into rap and EDM songs while writing disassociated chunks of the later parts of this fic. So, yeah- watch out for the Zhaolucard smut scene at the epilogue of this fanfic that will be much, _much_ steamier than the other one I already have out. Oh boy… someone will be moaning _A LOT_. And I mean it.
> 
>  


	4. It's Nice to Meet You, My Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alucard meets a bartender who turns out to be an important character.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah. A double-chapter release to make up for the long time I was away. Supposedly, Alucard’s first encounters with Ruby, Miya, Gossen, and Zilong, _as well as Alucard’s wedding to Miya_ , would all be in one chapter, but decided against it because it would be over 25,000 words long and a very daunting read.
> 
> Therefore I have decided to split up this megachapter into four parts, depending on how many words I end up writing. I am still fleshing out the Zilong and Gossen first meetings as of now, as well as the reactions of the Demon Hunter Clan to Miya when she first visits them, and Alucard’s wedding to Miya, along with how Estes feels about the whole situation. Yep, the story is becoming way longer than I expected and planned it to be. Couple that with my real-life responsibilities and time spent playing the game instead of writing this, and thus, updates would take really long. But I will definitely finish this story and upload the Zilong/Alucard scene in the epilogue as a treat for you all for being patient with me. :) Also, Alucard deserves to be happy after all the shit he goes through in this story.
> 
> Of course, the trigger warnings: Internalized homophobia, mentions of torture and abuse, religious indoctrination, emotional manipulation, PTSD.

"Another beer, please," Alucard was yet in another bar, this time The Golden Stork, a seaside tavern at the eastern coasts of the Moniyan Empire after he had taken on yet another mission alone. He needed some time away from Ruby after that uncomfortable night when she attempted to advance on him. Even though he told Ruby to pretend that nothing ever happened between them afterwards, he could no longer bring himself to continue ever going on missions with her after that night.

"Here you go, handsome. Enjoy!" Amy, the bartender, winked at him flirtatiously after she handed him his beer. Amy had pale skin, purple eyes, and some strands of silver-white hair peeking out of the colourful scarf she wore over her head. She wore a slinky, magenta sequined dress that reached up to the middle of her thighs and flaunted her cleavage. Even underneath the soft, golden glow of the string lights hanging beneath the exposed wooden joists and beams that set the atmosphere of the bar as a place for craft beer, acoustic guitar, and deep conversations rather than glaring neon lights, colourful cocktails, electronic dance music, and salacious twerking, Amy’s skin still appeared light with a bluish undertone to it. It was not that she was sickly pale, but rather, this pale, purplish skin was her natural skin tone.

Amy stuck around for a while near Alucard, flirting with him noticeably more than the other customers. Alucard coolly rebuffed all her advances, having resigned himself at this point to becoming celibate for the rest of his life. He didn’t find Amy attractive at all, although he acknowledged her beauty the same way as he would a painting of a maiden in an art gallery. He saw no point in trying to straighten himself out anymore when he decided that avoiding romance and sex altogether would be a lot easier on him anyway. After all, he really just went to The Golden Stork for a few drinks and to stay the night in one of the upstairs rooms.

He had, at this point, fully and completely resigned himself to being celibate and single as willed of him by the Divine Creator who refused to answer his prayers to be made heterosexual with an affirmative. It was not like he absolutely needed a significant other to become happy, anyway, no matter what was in his medical and psychological reports, and no matter what everyone else told him. Besides, he could only be truly happy when he could feel it even when he is on his lonesome. And despite the assessment that he must not go on missions alone, he found happiness in these solo missions where he could freely pace himself to see more of the Land of Dawn after the mission is over, and he would not have to get roped in to go to the same clubs and eat at the same restaurants over and over again when he would go on missions with his false friends or endure those awkward moments when he’d go on missions with Ruby or, _especially,_ Alaric.

He’d resorted to only checking out men in secret and then just forgetting that they were ever there, or at least trying to. Although he’s already accepted that he could not control his involuntary attractions to other men, he could control how he would actively react to the situations he would find himself in. After all, if he would never act on his homosexual impulses, he never truly did anything wrong. And just then, at this moment, Alucard was surreptitiously checking out a slender, young man seated three tables from the bar counter where he stayed. He had long, curly blond hair, and he wore a black spandex outfit that flaunted the form of his slender body and left his toned chest exposed, and on it were small bits of armour, accessorized with a royal blue scarf to contrast with the otherwise neutral colours of his getup. He drunkenly blabbered on and on about swords, blood, tigers, and roses. At this point, he was probably on his tenth glass of beer already.

"Time to witness the handsome!" the man that Alucard had been looking at shouted smugly over the acoustic guitar tune that was playing in the bar. He stood on one of the tables and started to dance to the beat. Alucard stared more intently at him, watching his drunken gyrations that showed off more of his form even though he stayed clothed throughout the bizarrely sultry dance. Most of the bar patrons looked at him with bewildered expressions on their faces. Others seem to react in a blasé manner to the spectacle before them, perhaps having seen him do the same thing too many times before.

"That’s Lancelot," Amy pointed out to Alucard. "He’s a regular here, and he’s really like that when the booze gets to him. He becomes more talkative and even more of a show-off than he already is. Nothing too harmful, though, so we generally just let him be. After all, guy’s still a paying customer. And admittedly, some of the bar’s patrons actually go here to see him plastered like that."

"Oh, uh… no! I’m absolutely not checking him out! I don’t swing that way!" Alucard was immediately on his defensive, startled at being caught. He visibly shuddered when Amy snapped him out of the trance that he had inadvertently found himself falling into.

"I’m _not_ saying you’re one of those abominations, Alucard. But I can’t blame you for staring, though," Amy tried to reassure him, and Alucard did his best to hide his annoyance when Amy unintentionally referred to him, being a gay man, as an abomination. "He’s got hair worthy of being in a shampoo commercial. He’s too pretty for his own good. He’s even prettier than some women. No, scratch that- _most_ women. And I guess the alcohol doesn’t help matters that much, either. The stuff we serve here is rather strong."

* * *

"Hey! Alucard, is it?" Amy tapped Alucard’s shoulder. Alucard was jolted awake from a dreamless sleep. He must have dozed off on the bar counter after he had a drink too many, and he saw in front of him a half-finished glass of vodka, which was most likely the last drink he ordered before he drifted off.

"Whoa, what time is it?" Alucard slurred. "My head’s pounding… I must have drunk some strong shit. Did I really fall asleep in here? Where’s everybody else?"

"Yeah, you did. You were passed out for around half an hour. You were already on your fifteenth glass when you just passed out like that. Nobody really gave a shit, though. People just got used to seeing these kinds of stuff," Amy said, wiping one of the glasses until its reflection sparkled. "It’s three in the morning. The bar’s closed, and everyone’s left the place but us and Rishi, the proprietor, in the manager’s office. I’m just doing some final inventory work. By the way, are you still gonna finish that?" Miya pointed to the half-filled glass.

"Nah, I’m good. By the way, what happened with Lancelot?"

"Oh, you know…" Amy took the half-finished glass and washed it, as with the rest.

"What? T-tell me."

"He danced some more, took off the upper part of his gaudy outfit, got so plastered that his friends had to drag him to the room he booked for the night before anything more could happen. Nothing out of the ordinary- wait," Amy paused for a bit as soon as she put down the last glass on the drying tray, "Can we talk outside? Just the two of us? I need to tell you something… something really important."

"Look. If you’re trying to proposition me, I’m not interested," Alucard said, his voice somewhat returning to normal. "Besides, I don’t sw-ugh…" Alucard interrupted himself right there, feigning a sudden headache, before his booze-loosened tongue might ruin his entire life in a world where homophobia seemed to be as normal as breathing.

"It’s not that," Amy said curtly. "And before you ask, I don’t work here as a prostitute. We don’t have prostitutes on staff in this hotel. I’m really just a bartender."

Alucard swiftly recovered, "Sorry about that… So what is it you want to talk to me about anyway?"

"You are a Demon Hunter, right?"

"Yeah, why?"

"We should take this conversation outside. Let’s sit by the fishing pier," Amy said.

"Why do I get the feeling that you’re trying to take me out on a date or something?" Alucard asked, doubting his zigzagging, clumsy, drunken movements. At this state, he was still feeling fuzzy from the strong drinks he had imbibed that had even caused him to fall asleep on the bar counter.

"This isn’t a date, Alucard. This is about an important mission that could spell the fate of the Land of Dawn, and the worlds beyond."

"You know, at this point, I can’t tell who’s drunker between us."

"Well, I’ve been drinking on the job quite a bit. Gotta sample some of the craft beers sometimes," Amy commented briefly and then focused herself on the pressing matter at hand. "All right. So, what I need to tell you is that I am not what I seem. You know why I have this colourful scarf on? It’s to hide my ears." Amy settled by the edge of the fishing pier, removing her footwear and allowing her shins and feet to soak in the seawater. Underneath the moonlight, her skin looked even paler, with a tone almost as creamy as the waxing gibbous moon itself.

"So you’re an Elf? It’s no secret that Elves are real. We don’t live in some boring fictional world where Humans like myself are the only sentient creatures of the known universe," Alucard correctly concluded, even though Amy did not remove her scarf. He followed suit and sat next to Amy; he took off his boots and socks and folded up his trousers, dipping his feet and calves into the seawater as his legs dangled from the edge of the fishing pier like Amy was doing. "I’ve even worked with a Steel Elf from Eruditio before, asked her for help with some weapon repairs and even added a Noumenon Energy upgrade to the ballistic fibres weaved into the fabrics of my trench coats. Why do you need to hide?"

"I… I’m a rare kind of Elf, living shut off from the rest of the world for two thousand years. I’m a Moon Elf," Amy said, looking down at her flapping legs. She let the cool seawater wrap around the bare skin, letting the calming effect sink in.

"A Moon Elf? I’ve heard about what happened to the Central Empire of Moonlake a few months ago. I’m sorry. What are you doing all the way out here as a bartender, anyway?"

"I became a bartender, primarily to familiarize myself with humans and their behaviours. I find that human-frequented bars are the ideal places to study the social dynamics of the clientele, as well as the mind-altering effects of alcohol. After all, _In Vino Veritas_. From booze, the truth comes out."

"Why the interest in us?" Alucard asked. "We played a part in the destruction of your homeland, and I apologize on their behalf. As brazen it is, coming from just one man who wasn’t even there to witness the carnage."

"Sit back, and relax. This is gonna be a long one," Amy began, not looking at all at Alucard, opting instead to stare into the distant horizon where ocean met the night sky.

> "We’ve isolated ourselves from the rest of the world ever since The Great Sacrifice two thousand years ago to protect the World Tree, which is at the Sacred Woodland west of the Moonlake. The World Tree is the origin of the universe, the centre of where the Big Bang began. And the Kings of the Moon Elves are born underneath the lush canopy of this Tree. But ever since the seal of Alice broke eighty years ago, our homeland, and in turn, the rest of existence as we know it, is in danger. When the Second Plane War broke out, our most recent King, Estes, was gravely injured, and he had to sleep within the Tree. Without his guidance and wisdom, we have fallen into disarray.
> 
> As the war of the Orcs and the Humans pressed on, they have rampaged through our shores and destroyed much of what we called home. Whether it was woodland, farms, or buildings, much of the Central Continent was blown to smithereens or set on fire. In a desperate last stand at the Moon Temple, I prayed. I resigned my fate to Him, to Tŏn, the Moon God. As a temple worshipper since I was a wee child, I have learned to put my faith above everything else. And so I thanked Him for the gift of life, for the gift of friendship, of knowledge, of love, of fun- and I understood that what He gave, He had the right to take away. I let His will be done.
> 
> And in this moment of desperation, He answered my prayers. With His powers, He blessed my bow and my eagle. I fired shot after shot at the enemies, Human and Orc alike. We drove them away like a falling tide, and once again, we were left alone to rebuild what they had destroyed. The Moon Elves recognized me as an incarnation of the Moon God, but really, I am not. I still am a temple worshipper at my very soul, at the very core of my being. I am but a mere emissary of Him on the Land of Dawn.
> 
> Now, they have placed their faith and trust in me so that I may lead them to victory, and that we may someday foster peace throughout the universe. With that said, I’m not just any Moon Elf. I’m pretty much the leader of them, standing in for the missing king. My real name is Miya Ganymede, and I simply disguised myself with the human name of Amy Gousablo, with the human identity of a bartender at The Golden Stork Seaside Hotel’s tavern.

"You have got to be kidding me. What kind of leader are you to not be with your people when they need you the most?" Alucard asked.

"Please let me finish. This is gonna be a long one again, so listen up," Miya began once more.

> "Thankful for our victory, although it was a Pyrrhic one, I prayed once more in the temple. And I heard the most important message from the Moon God. Tŏn had told me that the Moon Elves must humble themselves and seek out the aid of humans, and in turn, help them. After all, the Moon Elves and the Humans are kindred spirts, and Demons are the common enemy.
> 
> Before the Great Sacrifice of Pisces, Humans and Moon Elves intermarried and had children. In fact, it is estimated that about one billion humans living at the Land of Dawn at present has a Moon Elf as a distant ancestor. And after the Great Sacrifice, new teachings had spread throughout the Land about righteousness and purity to strengthen the power of the Crystal, and one of those teachings was that we must isolate ourselves from the rest of the world, for it is our purpose to protect the central nexus of all existence – the World Tree. We were also taught to be wary of false prophecies, especially the prophecy about the intermarriage of a Human and a Moon Elf.
> 
> Tŏn had revealed to me that those isolationist teachings were propagated by false prophets, emissaries of the Dark Lord who secretly continued to work despite the seal placed on the Apocalypse Queen, to cause divisions among us. He revealed to me that the prophecy which states that the holy matrimony of a Human and a Moon Elf would herald the end of demons, about a generation after the Holy Crystal’s seal breaks, was foretold by the great soothsayer Gnost, the advisor of Orestes, who was back then the Moon Elf King. This prophecy obviously would not be fulfilled if we refuse to go out to the world and open our territories for trade and diplomacy. It is then clear to me that the prophecy is a true one.
> 
> Well, since the Demons are the common enemies of almost every sentient creature in the known universe, I thought that it would be a wise decision for me to first reach out directly to the Demon Hunter Clan, your faction, after some familiarization with human behaviour in my travels. And based on what I have seen outside of the Central Empire of Moonlake, you’re different from most humans. I have a good feeling about you."

"Wait. What do you mean by that?" Alucard questioned Miya’s last sentence. "I don’t suppose you’re assuming that _I’m_ the Prophetic Human, and _you’re_ the Prophetic Moon Elf, and we’re getting married _right now_ to herald the end of demons once and for all? Like, it would be awesome as fuck to instantly end all Demonkind and be at the top of the Demon Hunter Leaderboards and stay in it forever by virtue of just marrying someone to fulfil some prophecy if it were true, but really. I’m not that easy," Alucard briefly paused to think about how to construct his next sentence, "If I would ever marry, I want _her_ to be someone I love and know very well." He finished the last sentence with an exhausted sigh. He took care to emphasize the female pronoun to further mask his homosexuality to a Moon Elf, a race of sentients whom he knew to be innately more perceptive than humans. And to boot, she was not just any Moon Elf, but one who was blessed by the Moon God Himself to have powers stronger than a run-of-the-mill guy of her race.

"Neither am I ‘easy’, Alucard," Miya replied with a sigh as well, slightly annoyed. "Tŏn told me that it must not be just any shotgun wedding between a Human and a Moon Elf. The prophetic union needs to fulfil the three elements of a true holy marriage, that one, the husband and wife must love each other unconditionally, through good times and bad, sickness and health, for better or worse. Two, there must be openness to procreation and new life, which is the driving, biological purpose of marriage in the first place, the manifestation of the Divine Creator’s intelligent and perfect design. And third, the union must, beyond the love of husband, wife, and offspring, be an all-encompassing expression of love for the Divine Creator. Everything within the marriage and the family must bring them closer to Him through how the family members help each other discover their purpose here in the universe through their journey of life here on the mortal plane."

"Honestly, you’d have better luck looking elsewhere for that," Alucard said, voice dripping with sarcasm. "I will still be willing to help you if you need me to brutally slaughter demons, though. I’m honestly quite sceptical about this prophecy, whether it is foretold by a Moon Elf King’s advisor or not. I’ve heard it since I was a kid, though, and thought that it’s just baloney because of the isolationism of the Moon Elves that I thought wouldn’t change any time soon. And I still think it is bullshit, even as I’m talking to you right now. Really, the only way to herald the end of Demonkind is to kill them all, hunt them to extinction like the dodos- violently, without mercy. That is really why the Demon Hunters exist in the first place."

"Perhaps that is so, which is why I have considered talking to you about this," Miya said, her tone of chagrin shifting to neutral, polite formality. "With that said, I would need to disseminate the things that I have told you to the rest of your faction. We will go to your headquarters first thing in the morning tomorrow so that we can rest for the whole day today. I’ll be making the necessary arrangements with Ms. Rishi to tell her I won’t be tending the bar tonight."

"It would be better if Nosferatu, our leader, would know to expect you to visit, though. Why not take a video on my phone to record your message and send it to him? Make sure that I appear in it though, so that he knows to trust you," Alucard suggested.

"Seems like a good idea," Miya replied, taking off her scarf to reveal her pointy, Elven ears and long, silver-white hair which she had tied back in a bun. She then untied the bun to free a long ponytail. "You know what they say, when in Nost-Gal, do as the Nost-Galeans do. And so I will do what the Humans do to connect and communicate in this day and age. What better way to gain their trust?"

Alucard took out Belmont, his smartphone, from one of his coat pockets. The technology of phones has advanced to a point that phones could now be called by name and be given commands starting with a word that corresponds to their given name. A phone could also recognize its owner’s voice and know not to follow commands from other voices, and for the more expensive and advanced models such as the one that Alucard has, the phone has a mechanism to detect if a potential thief’s voice was masked with magic or override tech to imitate the real owner’s voice.

"Belmont, hover mode, 2.5 feet distance from my face. Stabilize hover for video recording," Alucard said to the phone. Belmont moved forward about two and a half feet from their faces as its owner told it to do, just enough to show on the screen both of them and a good bit of the background- the moonlit, starry night sky and the silhouettes of buildings with warm lights coming out from the windows of those who stayed awake at the hour just before the wee morning.

"Belmont, recording in three, two, one," Alucard spoke. Belmont promptly activated the video recording mode on command.

"I just speak in front of the screen, is that right? Kinda like the magic mirrors we have back home."

"Yeah, you do," Alucard replied. "The image you see on the screen is basically what gets recorded. You can then review the footage later on in a separate video editing application and cull the unnecessary stuff and bloopers, leaving only the essentials."

"Did this just get recorded?"

"Yeah, it did, but this won’t go out elsewhere unless I complete the two-way confirmation that this footage should be sent," Alucard said, then looked at his phone, "Belmont, stop the recording, and delete the resulting footage." Alucard looked back at Miya. "All right, you ready?"

"Okay," Miya confirmed.

"Belmont, recording in three, two, one."

> "It’s nice to meet you, my friends. I am Miya Ganymede, standing leader of the Moon Elves in the absence of our King Estes. A few months ago, the wars of the Humans and Orcs have raged on and destroyed much of the Central Empire of Moonlake. The carnage has gone to the point that the Moon Elves have almost gone extinct. The last few of us were holed up at the Moon Temple, the last security system that we have just before the Sacred Emerald Woodland, which we have sworn to protect with our lives.
> 
> Almost all my life was spent at the Moon Temple- worshipping, studying, training. Doing the best I can so that someday, I may become a worthy sacrifice to Tŏn. It was a happy life, although difficult. Throughout my life I had made friends, had fun, and learned a lot. I have honed my marksmanship and hunting skills to help feed my people and fend off most attacks.
> 
> Overall, my life was relatively peaceful, but that war between the Humans and Orcs that has reached beyond our shores changed it all. It was then when I had first really seen any other sentient races aside from Elves outside of my studies, and my first impression of them wasn’t in a good light. It was inevitable that I would develop a dislike for Humans because of how they had played a part in the desecration of the place I have called home.
> 
> However, the voice of Tŏn Himself called to me. He told me that the Moon Elves must humble themselves and open our borders to the world, to seek help from Humans, and in turn, help them as well in times of need. I know in my heart that the problem does not stop only in stopping the battle between the Humans and the Orcs. The problem also lies in the divisions we have made amongst the various sentient races that inhabit the Land of Dawn.
> 
> Tŏn had also commanded me to search for a way to free King Estes from his slumber deep within the Sacred Emerald Woodland, and that I would need to leave the Central Empire and see more of the outside world. And so I did. I took on the persona of Amy Gousablo, a human bartender. I have thought of this as a way to get to know Humankind because of the principle of In Vino Veritas. And soon enough, I met the guy standing beside me right now.

Alucard smiled and waved at the camera to acknowledge Miya’s words.

> I found out that Humans aren’t actually that bad, and that there was truth to the old stories of Humans and Moon Elves being friends, and even lovers, before the Great Sacrifice. You are a lot like us in many ways.
> 
> And when I met this guy who decided to drop by The Golden Stork to have some drinks and stay in one of the rooms, he introduced himself as Alucard, a Demon Hunter. With that knowledge, I felt that I was one step closer to fulfilling my mission to awaken Estes and eventually restore peace to the world.
> 
> So after the bar closed, we sat by the fishing pier on the beach near The Golden Stork and I talked to him about many things: generally things about me, about him, about the Moon Elves, and about the Demon Hunters. He then suggested that I record this video to send to you guys so that you know to expect me to be there tomorrow to meet more of you guys in person and begin the collaboration of the Moon Elves and the Demon Hunters.
> 
> May the Moon God bless you all."

"All right, Nosferatu should be getting your message already," Alucard said as he sent the recording.

"But before we think of anything else, we need to rest first," Miya said.

Alucard stayed the rest of the night and the morning at The Golden Stork and he also paid the rate for Miya’s suite separately for that night, further cementing his status as someone that Miya could trust. Miya has been renting an economy suite on a day-by-day basis at the tavern in exchange for her bartending work.

In the few hours left of the night and most of the morning after, Alucard fell asleep immediately and for once, he didn’t have nightmares, nor did he restlessly toss and turn. Perhaps this was the sign that his brief quip at the absurd idea that he and Miya are the prophetic couple might not be just the insignificant, sarcastic comment that he thought it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wanted the 4th chapter of this story to be one with Miya as one of the main characters because of the number’s meaning in Chinese culture, and somehow, despite it not being the ‘sexless married life’ chapter as originally planned, the plan of it being Miya-centric still happened. I originally intended ‘4’ to be symbolic of Alucard’s inner death, of the sacrifice he made in order to bring hope to the world by being the human of the prophecy despite not truly being in love with Miya, or the death of a bygone chapter in his life, akin to the meaning of the Panic! at the Disco song Death of a Bachelor.
> 
> I’ll be honest, though, that I have encountered a massive roadblock bigger and harder [heh] than a really good Grock player’s walls perfectly interrupting the trajectory of Fanny’s steel cables and/or Johnson’s car every single time when it comes to writing how exactly Miya and Alucard would meet. As in, I really don’t ship this pairing at all although I’ll still do my best to respect those who do because shipping wars are pointless, and based on Miya’s lore, she must have something of a misanthropic streak, similar to Irithel, because humans have played a part in the destruction of her homeland. And even if the Moon God probably told her to try to reach out to humans, it would be a struggle for her. Admittedly, what took me so long was the fact that I kept cringing at the several versions of first-meeting conversations I have written between them that I ended up fine-tuning this too much, with long-ass breaks in between to write drabbles of other fics, play the game itself, or just live my life in general.
> 
> I just learned that Ganymede is one of Zeus’s lovers in Greek mythology and that his Roman name, Catamitus, is the origin of the word catamite. Basically, he is the classical era quintessential example of an uke. Oh, the delicious irony, considering that homophobia is a central theme of this fanfic… At first, I have chosen Ganymede as Miya’s surname for this fanfiction because of the fact that Ganymede is the biggest Moon of the biggest planet of the solar system, which I already knew beforehand. I have this headcanon that Moon Elf surnames are the names of all the moons in the real life Solar System. Also, according to the myth, Zeus put Ganymede in the sky to become the Aquarius constellation, associated with the Eagle. The Eagle is an animal associated with Miya in her canon lore, so the surname is both fitting of her and ironic.


End file.
